


A Wedding Saga

by thenovaksisters



Series: The Saga's of a Bisexual and a Gay [2]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: M/M, Magnus can't decide what to wear, Original Characters - Freeform, Wedding Planning, its set in the show universe but ragnors alive, joint bachelor party, lightwood parents being accepting, malec being generally beautiful, no angst because that shit nasty, that isnt how bachelor parties work magnus
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-10-03
Packaged: 2018-12-06 23:56:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11611623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thenovaksisters/pseuds/thenovaksisters
Summary: Alec and Magnus are getting married. Which means planning and preparation, a joint Bachelor party that Alec remains opposed to and Magnus doubting whether he’ll ever decide on what to wear for the big day. However, Magnus doesn’t have the slightest intention of rushing any of it. He plans on savouring every moment of this: of loving Alec and finally proving it to the world.Aka: the six-day lead up to the big day filled with fluff and domesticness (which from now on shall be a word).





	1. In Six Days Time

**Author's Note:**

> It may have taken me a while to get round to writing this but I'm finally going to continue this series. This fanfic is set a couple of months after Part One of this series and it can be read as a separate piece but it’ll make more sense with the context of the first one as that introduces my original character Darcy Williams who is a mundane Alec befriends in… unique circumstances? 
> 
> I’m going to try to update as often as I can because I’ve already written the basis for almost all the chapters. I hope you enjoy this fic and as always, feedback is gratefully received :)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to add a disclaimer at the beginning of this story that this fic is not finished and hasn't been updated in many months. This has been partly due to my GCSE's and having no time to work on this while revising for exams, and also partly due to the unhelpful roller coaster that is life. I do plan on finishing it eventually, but right now it sort of concludes on a cliffhanger, apologies. 
> 
> Still, I hope you enjoy reading :)

It works like this: Magnus doesn't _mind_ shadowhunters. 

For the most part, he's never minded shadowhunters. Yes, they can be annoyingly arrogant and persistently needy little shits at times, over the centuries Magnus has definitely met a couple he severely minded - hated even - but _for the most part_ , keeping out of their way has meant Magnus can almost be partial to them. 

It’s simple really, Magnus only ever lets himself be pulled into the angelic business of pompous shadowhunters if he's also being paid a ridiculous sum of money to do it. And then it's a job so it's perfectly acceptable to hate his employer and vow never to do business with them again. That can apply to every downworlder, shadowhunter and mundane alike who chooses to seek his magical expertise. 

The rest of the time, as long as Magnus ignores them, Shadowhunters rarely prove much of a nuisance – with the exception, of course, of a few genocidal individuals. Fortunately, even the clave on their high-fucking-horses agreed with the downward on eliminating Valentine Morgenstern and his maniac of a son those years back.

It’s not as though Valentine is an accurate representation of most Shadowhunters, however, as he was his own breed of monster. With the common Shadowhunter the key is to be patient, for patience is essential if you ever decide to be in the company of a being who will always believe themselves superior of anyone and everyone.

So, in the end, Magnus can tolerate Shadowhunters, but experience has taught him that he dislikes a good majority of them so really, they’re mostly tolerable as good clients… that pay exceptionally well.

It works like this: Magnus can only tolerate shadowhunters…

Well, that was true… till now.

Till Alexander Lightwood in all his oblivious beauty stumbled and tripped, and in all his admirably wary heroism tumbled and fell unexpectedly, face first, into Magnus life, royally messing up everything Magnus had always been sure about shadowhunters.   

See, Alec is simultaneously the best and worst shadowhunter Magnus has met in many centuries.

Alec is easily one of the most skilful fighters he’s ever come across, with a fierce instinctual protectiveness and every shadowhunters patented fearlessness. Fearlessness that the warlock regards as blind-bravery: stupid and regardless of consequence, though it’s admirable all the same.  

But Alec is honesty, open-minded and gay. Which, sown together into a single person driven by pleasing those around him is not only catastrophic but makes him pretty much the worst shadowhunter Magnus has ever met. Alec was simply never going to please his close-minded parents and as long as blatant honesty ran through his veins, he was never going to make a good shadowhunter either. Which had made him the perfect trap for Magnus: distractingly good looking, adorably well-meaning and quite lost. 

An exceedingly protective brother, a natural born leader and a good soldier… the man who stole Magnus’ heart, all of it, for the first time in centuries and the man Magnus was going to marry, in six days’ time.

***

“Alexander…?” 

“I didn't want to worry Izzy,” Alec says matter of factly, freezing in the doorway as Magnus glances up, stopping seemingly apprehensive when he appears to realise that with him he trails dark red footprints that stretch out behind him from the lofts front door.  

The shadowhunter rarely brings work home. Alec almost always stops off at the institute after missions to drop off the majority of his gear and at least wash the ichor of his hands. But today, the shadowhunter is geared up head to toe, and dripping enough blood that Magnus thinks Izzy would have every right to worry.

“So you decided to worry me instead,” Magnus says, discarding the drink he’d been enjoying before his fiancé arrived home in a progressed state of blood loss and standing immediately, “how terribly romantic of you,” he adds, stepping forward to begin examining Alec. 

The shadowhunter goes to pull away before catching the sharp look Magnus passes him and instead dropping his hands to hang by his side as he starts shifting his weight from foot to foot and grimacing slightly on his left one: “I’m fine, it's fine, it's… just a scratch.” 

“Of course,” Magnus sighs, “but before it causes you to bleed to death, would you mind removing that less than flattering jumper so I can get a better look at the scratch in question.”

He’s teasing Alec lightly and this seems to ease the tension in the shadowhunters shoulders.

Which puts Magnus a little at ease too because this may not be the first time Alec's returned to the loft covered in blood – and it definitely won't be the last – but it doesn’t entirely remove the seriousness of the situation.

Alec pulls his jumper from his shoulders slowly with a quiet wheeze he clearly tries to stifle. Instead of his lean torso being patterned with dark ink markings snaking around his ribs and over the pale plains of scarred skin, Alec's covered in a sheen of sweat and blood that does a good job of masking the runes Magnus has memorised by now.

Then the warlock notices the dark wound, twisting over his shoulder to come down past his collarbone in thick ribbons of flesh and blood. The clear bite mark of a demon and a wound almost unaffected by Iratze, threaded with poison.

He sighs, Alec flinching under his gaze. “Alexander, I wouldn’t quite call that a scratch.”

“I… it was a new group, first mission for some of them, they got clumsy…”

“And like always you decided to put yourself in harm’s way to protect them?” Magnus asks, stepping into Alec space to better examine the wound in all its severity.

The shadowhunter seems to regain enough confidence to roll his eyes: “I’m alive.”

Magnus’ eyes soften, smiling as he hears the Alec he’s more used to. “I’m going to try and keep it that way. Please sit.”

Alec does as he’s told, exhaling warily as he does so, but observes Magnus curiously as he begins to sort through his shelves, seeking the appropriate potions to fit with the effective remedies assorted in his head.

Luckily, Alec’s breathing seems steady. Though Magnus does detect that it’s also a good deal shallower than he’s used to hearing from his shadowhunter.

Returning to his side, Magnus plants himself down next to Alec and runs a fleeting touch up his arm, feeling the warmth seep from his fingertips into Alec’s shining skin, blood glimmering in the slightly dulled light of the loft. Alec relaxes under his hands, eyes flickering closed as if he’s been fighting all this time to keep them open.

“Please try to stay alive till after the wedding, darling.”

A smile snatches at Alec’s lips though its weaker than his usual one, and he turns his head so he can glance at Magnus through half-lidded, tired eyes; eyes that are now brimming with fondness, every drop of apprehension drained from his demeanour.

“Izzy’ll be too busy dressing me up, I’ll have no time for missions. She’s…” his words fade with a grimace but Magnus needs to keep going if he’s going to stop the bleeding. “She’s-she’s convinced she’ll find the perfect suit, whatever that means.” Alec attempts to finish before closing his eyes once more.

“So, while you’re here getting blood all over this sofa, these… ‘ _shadowhunters in training’_ returned to the institute unscathed?” Magnus asks, thinking back to what Alec had admitted was the reason he now sat in their lounge soaked in his own blood.

Sometimes the warlock really wishes Alec wasn’t so adamant to protect everyone around him at his own cost. The shadowhunter probably detects Magnus’ mild irritation but an innocent look contorts his features as he asks: “You don’t mind, do you?”

Observing his lover’s small but nevertheless present grin, Magnus decides he won’t give Alec the satisfaction of answering that question and keeps his eyes down instead. Alec seems to breath a laugh, rolling his head back against the sofa cushions.

The wound has already stopped bleeding since Magnus got to work. His magic gleams along with the sheen of perspiration across Alec’s neck and shoulders and in the silence that follows, Magnus decides to make an observation aloud: “Dating mundanes is far less stressful.”

“Depends on what type,” Alec mutters through barely parted lips that lift slightly as he smiles at their banter, disregarding the serious nature of the situation. And then he opens his eyes, brighter than before and already shining in their usual contentment at being in Magnus’ company.

Alec is okay. Alec’s going to be ok.

“I suppose. Humans do come in quite a variety of nature’s. However, I can’t remember one ever showing up like this.” The warlock’s hands leave Alec’s shoulder as he pulls himself up from the sofa suddenly.

Alec shakes his head: “They have laws against this, don’t they?”

“Murder?” Magnus hums, pulling some bandaging from a pocket hole on one of the lower shelves and turning to face his fiancé: “Yes.”

“Would they rather I left the demon to kill them?” Alec asks almost seriously, watching the warlock as he approaches.

“I would rather you left the demon,” Magnus leans down a fraction to start wrapping the wound that will be gone by morning if Alec’s lucky and Magnus’ spell does its job properly, “I’d rather like to marry you before you get yourself killed.”

Alec’s gaze softens.

Then he’s all bandaged up: a bloody, alive, mess of a shadowhunter, buckled back on a sofa with a love-sick look in his eyes.

“Thank you.” The words are concluded with Alec leaning up fractionally to place a light kiss to Magnus’ mouth, before he leans back once more, expelling a long breath through his parted lips. His exhaustion seems to be catching up with him. Magnus knows it was adrenaline alone that carried Alec limping all the way back to the loft, now he is in dire need of rest. 

The warlock’s thoughts are interrupted by the dull ring of his phone:

“Magnus, it’s Clary, Izzy’s wants to know…”

“He’s sat on my sofa with a sizable wound on his shoulder, but he’ll be alright.” Magnus can hear the girl sighing in relief before he’s even finished his sentence. Her relief touches him.

He’s known Clary for what might as well be her entire life. He’s only known Alec for two years but within those two years the pair have never tried to get along, despite obviously learning to care for each other. It's something that Magnus enjoys witnessing: their largely-unacknowledged love for one another.

“Are you sure you don’t need any help? The recruits he was out with seem to think he got hurt pretty badly?” Clary seems almost hesitant asking the question, her tone anything but certain.

Of course the recruits would say such a thing, Alec looked positively awful walking through the loft doors only quarter of an hour ago. His shadowhunter probably brushed it off and told them to go back to the institute, but Magnus wouldn’t blame them for being concerned.

“I’ve got it covered, don’t you worry biscuit, and tell Isabelle that I’m taking good care of her brother,” he tries to reassure her.

The warlock can detect the girls grateful smile through her next words: "Okay… I’ll call again later then. Thank you, Magnus.”

Before he’s even turned back to the sofa, the warlock can hear the even breaths of his Alexander deep in the rhythm of sleep. Good. He needs the rest. Only then does Magnus let himself sigh in relief akin to the Fairchild girl's only moments before. Alec is okay. Alec’s going to be ok.

***

“Magnus?” Isabelle’s voice echoes from the front room, stirring the warlock who proceeds to pace quickly out of the room and shut the door before Alec has a chance to wake.  

It’s only once he’s shut the door behind him that he considers whether he should change or not but Isabelle’s voice is closing in, with a second pair of footsteps following hers, so he decides to shrug it off and walk out into the main body of the loft.

“Isabelle, to what do I owe the pleasure?" Magnus bites back any aggravation at being bothered to smile at the brother and sister he finds stood purposefully in his living room.

He can’t help being slightly surprised to see both Izzy and Jace stood armoured to the max, with freshly dulling runes still hot on their skin. Though only an hour or so ago, Alec had looked the same; albeit he’d been covered in blood in addition.

Through ebony eyes that look at Magnus in a familiarly warm way, Izzy seems to relax upon spotting him. The warlock, however, remains in the doorway aloof, disinterested in fully committing himself to this conversation as of the time being. He’s already exhausted himself healing Alec, why else would the loft still smell vaguely of some kind of ichor and shadowhunter blood concoction, he hasn't really decided whether he'll aid them or not with whatever it is they came here for.

“Magnus…” Jace begins sternly, turning to face Magnus and pausing as his eyes set on the warlock where he leans against the doorframe leisurely: “hang on, is that Alec’s jumper?”

Glancing down his outfit, Magnus considers his response. He’s in a pair of loose fitting trousers that he usually only ever wears when he has no intention of leaving the loft. Around his shoulders hugs one of Alec’s more flattering jumpers that hangs down past his knuckles to almost the tips of his fingers.

He and Alec don’t actually differ much in build, Alec slightly leaner than Magnus in some respects while the warlock’s shoulders are somewhat broader, but Alec beats him with height by a good few inches. Much to Magnus’ delight if it means pulling Alec’s jumper sleeves around his hands so he can stand wrapped up in Alec’s smell, as comfortable and relaxed as Jace and Izzy have probably ever seen him, though, why should he care, he’s marrying their brother in six days. 

Izzy in all her dark beauty, stood with assertive poise beside the blonde Shadowhunter, rolls her eyes: “Jace, they’re engaged…”

“In case you’d forgotten,” Magnus completes, only have ironically.

If Jace is uncomfortable, he doesn’t show it, instead nodding gruffly, eager to change subject matters to one he’s perhaps more practised in.

Magnus had been a touch doubtful of how Jace would take married life five months ago, prior to a wedding Alec had dreaded. After all, though he’d kept quiet about it, Magnus had so desperately wanted to see everything work out flawlessly for the young Fairchild girl like it so rarely ever does.

But Jace had surprised him pleasantly. The young shadowhunters had slipped into married life so easily, in a way Magnus is sure most mundane, downworlder and shadowhunter’s alike would envy. Clary and Jace are married for love, Magnus knows few of their kind who are, and its worked to their advantage.

Now he can only hope the same for him and Alexander.

“Magnus,” Jace says, bowing his head to lose eye-contact with the warlock, “we need…”

“No.”

It comes out harsher than Magnus intends however he doesn’t have time for whatever it is they ‘need’ tonight. Not with his potentially dying fiancé asleep just a room away. Not when most of the conversations Magnus has had every day of his life for centuries have started with ‘needs’ that Magnus is supposedly expected to fulfil.

Izzy looks positively shell-shocked at the response. Jace looks lost. “I-ur…”

“Last time I checked, it was your job to save the world, not mine,” Magnus muses half-heartedly, turning his back on the pair – be it a little dramatically – to walk instead towards his drinks table. Magnus is not an alcoholic, but when one has lived as long as he has, there’s no harm in wanting some days to pass a little easier.

Jace in his eternally stubborn confidence shakes the confusion from his features: “We just need…”

“You just need something every day of the week. Alexander is hurt and I intend to look after him so you shall have to go bother some other warlock if you need magical assistance.”

“How badly is Alec hurt?” The confidence in Jace’s shoulders shrinks immediately, almost scarily so, revealing a sudden vulnerable fault in his emotionless amour.

Magnus speaks up once more, this time careful to be a little more reassuring in tone: “Nothing unhealable, Alec is fine.”

“I felt… but I didn’t…” Jace stutters.

Izzy rolls her eyes at her brother as if she thinks his reaction melodramatic. “Jace, you heard Magnus, Alec’s…”

“Fine.” The voice comes from the doorway and within seconds of hearing it, Magnus feels a wave of relief wash over him, instantly lightening his spirits. The voice is strong and a lot less breathless since the last time he heard it. There Alexander stands against the doorframe where Magnus stood minutes before, now dressed in fresh and loose-fitting clothes, a crooked grin plastered on his face despite the fact that he needs to lean to lessen the weight on his left leg.

“Alec, you look…” Izzy begins hesitantly, words fading out as she looks her brother up and down.

“Like shit,” Jace completes for her but Magnus can detect the hurt still present in his voice and still reflected dimly in the shine of his miss-matched eyes.

A few seconds go by in silence, the younger Lightwood Siblings clearly taking in Alec’s appearance to full extent. On second glance, Magnus can confirm it isn’t the healthiest Alec’s looked, though he looked worse an hour ago. Dark bruises contour his face and his shoulders slouch forward. Perhaps the most telling difference is his ever so slightly tipped stance as he favours one leg. For a shadowhunter he looks wrecked.

Magnus can’t help feeling guilty for admiring the intense contrast of Alec in this light.  Apparently he’s attractive even after narrowly escaping death; the bruising only igniting the green flecks in his hazel eyes.

Jace observes Alec almost sadly as he steps forward with purpose. The brothers meet so naturally it’s as though they’ve reunited like this one hundred times before, Jace’s hand clipping Alec’s uninjured shoulder to pull him into a casually loose hug that says he doesn’t like to see Alec like this.

Magnus also decides in that moment that Alec’s bluey-black battle stains have darkened dramatically since he got home so he may have down played the extent to which he stepped in for those young shadowhunters when their mission went sour.

Though that sounds exactly like Alec. 

“Demon bites will do that to you,” Alec mumbles with a pained smile, hand running up to his bound shoulder as Jace steps back.

Magnus’s attention is brought back to Izzy as she makes an upset, displeased sound at those words: “You got bitten, Alec? Why didn’t you call me? If it was that serious…”

“The best place for me was here Iz.” The words come so easily to him the warlock grins behind his glass of golden liquor.

“I promise to take excellent care of him Isabelle,” he chimes suddenly by way of reminding the group of his presence.

“There’s been another attack hasn’t there?” Alec’s asking then as his gaze runs down Izzy and Jace’s armed figures. The realisation seems to make him stand taller, despite how Magnus recognise – as small and faint as it is – the pain still lingering between his features.

“Yes… but Magnus is right, he needs to stay here with you because with a limp like that, you’re not leaving this apartment.” Whatever reply Magnus had expected, it wasn’t that and the warlock feels somewhat taken aback by Jace’s surely outburst, pleasantly so.

Alec instead narrows his eyes.  “Something’s up Jace and it’s our job…”

“To not be reckless and endanger ourselves more than we already do,” Jace intercepts, “Plus, it’s _our_ job…” he adds nodding to Izzy and himself, “to make sure you’re okay for your big day on Sunday. Alec, you’re staying here.”

Now Magnus almost feels touched too, quite bizarrely touched seeing as it’s Jace and the blonde shadowhunter has rarely ever managed to make him feel anything other than mildly irritated before. He supposes it’s in Jace’s natural disposition to mildly irritate those around him with a smug self-confidence the warlock’s never seen him drop.

Quite frankly, Jace is quite the divine example of why Magnus can only tolerate Shadowhunters. Not that he’d ever question Alec’s loyalty to the blonde; the warlock knows all about angelic bonds and how strong they can be. He also knows a great deal about Alexander too, enough to know that the angelic bond has nothing to do with his loyalty to Jace. The eldest Lightwood child isn’t quick to trust but once Alec has made his loyalty’s clear, little can change his mind. Magnus knows there's little Alec wouldn't do for Jace.

“A flux in demon attacks can mean anything Alec. All you need to be concerned about is getting better,” Izzy says, her tone strict.

“Then it’s decided. I promise to take good care of Alec and as nice as it was to see you, you’ll be going now.” He smiles at the sigh Alec expels with the words but Magnus so desperately wants them to be alone once more.

Izzy laughs out loud, “Fine, we’re leaving.”

Passing Alec, she plants a feathery-light kiss on his left cheek, before hovering at the door for Jace to follow. He appears to consider her statement, glancing between Alec and Magnus slowly like he has more to say, but ultimately, he ends up trailing behind Izzy out into the loft’s front room once more.

“Just don’t exert him too much Magnus, my brother needs rest,” she calls back as they re-enter the corridor outside the loft.

The girl’s laughter is somewhat smothered by the pained noise Jace makes following her statement. One that parallels Alec’s own clearly horrified groan as he finally collapses back on the sofa nearest to him.

Magnus lets himself chuckle quietly at the girl’s insinuations and both boys pained reactions, enjoying the warm feeling that laughter returns to his chest, and with a flick of his deft fingers, the loft door closes with a soft click.

This morning had been one of those mornings that the warlock prefers to drink away rather than reflect upon: a perfect spell, an unsatisfied client and an unjustified reason. Followed by him almost making a lifelong enemy of the Chairman when he narrowly missed stepping on the cats tail as he hurried into an afternoon meeting, forgetting entirely about lunch.

Retrospectively, the day was one of those that made Magnus desire nothing more than his Alexander and a quiet evening in. So far, this evening has been nothing of the sort.

“Sorry for falling asleep so suddenly earlier,” Alec mumbles, pulling the warlock out of his thoughts.

“Not at all, Alexander, you need the rest. How are you feeling?” He asks, knowing he won’t get more than a ‘fine’ from his suborn fiancé but letting his eternal hope that one-day Alec’s answer will be sincere, urge him into querying anyway.

“Fine…” Alec replies hesitantly, just as Magnus guessed he would, “but _you_ obviously aren’t.” The shadowhunter’s observations are bang on and it takes Magnus by surprise when Alec rises to his feet again and goes to reach for Magnus in an attempt to pull their bodies together.

“Just tired,” the warlock says, cautious as he folds into the shadowhunter’s body, leaning predominantly against his uninjured shoulder; not that Alec seems cautious at all, wrapping his arms around Magnus easily.

“Long day?” Alec's voice is laced with his own undeniable exhaustion. He probably would have slept all the way through till morning if Jace and Izzy hadn’t so rudely barged in before and made enough noise it woke the shadowhunter.  

“The longest,” Magnus answers, relaxing against his Alexander and letting the tension run out from his muscles because trying not to would be a lost cause now that he’s finally enveloped in his shadowhunter’s arms. He can feel Alec’s heartbeat, hear it where his head rests against Alec’s good shoulder, and the steady beat has already calmed him completely.

“So, you’ll sit back while I order dinner?” The shadowhunter says as they separate, their hands firmly interlocked, “seeing as you haven’t eaten today.”

“How do you know I haven’t eaten?” The warlock says, letting the confusion cover his features.

“Because when you’re tired like this it means you worked all day and when you’re working, you forget that you need more than coffee to survive.” Though Alec’s words are sincere and threaded with concern mirrored in his furrowed expression, Magnus smiles. Alec knows him well.

“Aren’t I supposed to be the one looking after you?” He says, tracing a light touch along Alec's bandaged shoulder and watching as the blue sparks settle, Alec's eyes darken and his concerned expression melts away.

“You already have. Now it’s my turn.” Alec replies simply.

***

“Ok but where’s your food?” The warlock asks as Alec falls onto the sofa beside him after handing him the bag steaming with delicious smelling takeout food.

“I ate earlier… at the institute,” Alec explains lamely as he rights his leg with a reserved grimace till he’s sat comfortably pressed against Magnus side, who turns to pass the shadowhunter a criticising look.

“So what do you intend to do now? Just watch me eat?”

Of course, Alec not telling him that he’d already eaten earlier was probably purposeful. Magnus wouldn’t have agreed to takeout if he’d known he was to eat it by himself. But he can’t be annoyed at the self-satisfied grin he finds shyly hung upon Alec’s handsome features.

“Do you… not want me to watch you eat?” Alec asks, small smile still ever present.

“You know I love your company Alexander but…” His words trail off as Alec shifts again, and then the brunette is moving completely so that he lies across the sofa with his head cushioned in Magnus’ lap.

“I’m not going anywhere until I’ve seen you eat something,” he says matter-of-factly.

Magnus isn’t exactly sure what feeling overwhelms him at that moment but it’s some mixture of undeniable fondness and perpetual love for his shadowhunter. A feeling that wants to choke him up so instead the warlock leans down to place a light kiss to Alec’s lips. A kiss that prompts a pleased hum from Alec.

“I love you so much,” he mumbles, still trying to shake the awed look from his eyes, with Alec’s bright hazel ones beaming up at him not helping matters.

“I love you to, now eat.”

In any other circumstance, Magnus would be annoyed when Alec proceeds to steal half of the mouthfuls he intends for himself as he makes his way through the boxes of his favourite takeout.

Incidentally, the warlock isn’t all that hungry anyway and not much could make him annoyed at Alec tonight, not where he lies cushioned in his lap, grinning up at Magnus and gazing at him through half-lidded gold specked eyes brimming with amusement each time he steals a mouthful.

Bruises fading on his cheekbones, but eyelids slowly gaining weight till Magnus can hear the shadowhunters breathes evening out against his will and Magnus watches his Alexander slowly slip into sleep.

A chaotic evening as it may have started out, that morphed into quite the perfect one in the warlock’s, probably biased, opinion. Though surprising Magnus is Alec's speciality.


	2. In Five Days Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Only Magnus cares about his outfit... literally, only Magnus. :D

Magnus wakes with one thing on mind: the wedding.

The wedding that just so happens to be taking place in less than a weeks’ time and one which he’s currently attending in his pyjamas if he can’t decide on a suit in the five remaining days. Which is a notion that’s admittedly got the warlock slightly anxious considering he hasn’t been able to do just that throughout the previous five _months_.

Wedding planning in general, as it turns out, is a tad harder than he'd anticipated. Magnus might have over five-hundred years’ experience at his disposal, but planning a wedding is quite unlike planning a party and is therefore an entirely new entity for even a warlock as old as himself.

Of course, Magnus has attended many weddings over the decades. From the grand to the simplistic, each with the couples own special twist because, as he’s found out, weddings tend to be a very personal matter. But Magnus has hardly ever entertained the prospect of his _own_ wedding, at least not before Alexander. Thankfully, upon learning about their engagement, darling Isabelle had been delighted at the idea of lending a hand. She's planned a wedding for her brother once before but this one is to be the wedding her brother actually wants from the heart, according to Isabelle, which makes an explicit difference in planning apparently.

So, with her help, and Clary's, whose artistry skills added a rather delightful finesse to every detail they finished planning, almost everything's already arranged, from the venue to the food… Everything apart from their outfits.

Alec’s suit is Isabelle’s concern. As for his own… Magnus doesn’t trust anyone else to make that final decision. However, making it himself is proving to have its own disadvantages. For someone who struggles to pick what to wear day to day, picking what to wear to your wedding is significantly harder.

Alec’s soft snores beside him are almost enough to calm the warlock. He has five days, one-hundred and twenty hours, which in total is seven-thousand and two-hundred minutes to make the decision.

Turning to better face his fiancé where he lies, arm extended out beneath the warlock’s torso, Magnus notices that Alec’s dark blemishes have faded to lilac tarnished makeshift freckles, that speckle the left side of his face where he obviously suffered a blow to the head during his heroics yesterday. It’s oddly beautiful. It’s painfully beautiful. His eyelashes lie against the peaks of his cheeks, fluttering in the workings of dreams, but his eyes remain sealed shut in sleep that speaks of just how tired Alec was for Magnus to wake first; a less than rare occurrence.

It’s in Alec raising to wake before the sun can top the skyline of Brooklyn, but it means that while Alec likes to make Magnus breakfast in bed, which the warlock can hardly complain about, he doesn't get to enjoy watching his Alexander sleep very often, so unequivocally peaceful like he so rarely is.

Alec moved in officially the weekend after they told everyone about their engagement, when Isabelle said she found it stupid they hadn’t already confirmed it seeing as Alec spent every night at the loft anyway. They successfully passed the moving in together test without any issue at all seeing as Alec doesn’t really care much for interior design, and now, honestly, Magnus isn’t too worried about marriage either; he’s waited long enough, he just wants to be married to Alexander.

But about marriage: ideally, he’d prefer to marry Alec in a suitable outfit.

Moving at last to get up, seeing as dawn light has been streaming in through the loft windows for well over the past hour, Alec stirs and the hand under Magnus reaches to pull him back. Perhaps Alec _was_ awake… somewhat.

“No.” His voice is so wreaked by sleep that Magnus can’t help but chuckle and let a warm fond feeling flood out from his chest and heat his muscles as he surrenders to his shadowhunter’s eager grip, letting Alec pull them close till they’re nose to nose and he's well aware of Alec's breath ghosting over his lips.

“Alexander, I have a wedding to plan,” he says, still slightly relishing in the warmth radiating from Alec’s long lean body where the shadowhunter has already managed to tangle their legs and press their chests together.

“I spent a whole day tasting different cakes, you spent a week visiting different venues, Izzy hasn’t stopped talking about it for months, I refuse to believe there is anything left to plan,” Alec mumbles, though his words are relatively incoherent as he seals his arms around the warlock’s waist.

“I disagree,” Magnus starts but finds himself laughing when Alec moves forward to burrow his face into the warlock’s neck and hum lowly and happily just to make the warlock aware that he has no intention of being persuaded out of this situation.

“How are you feeling this morning, Alexander?” He decides to ask instead since he’s forfeited to Alec’s possessive grip anyway and might as well get something useful out of it.

“Fine,” Alec breathes against his collarbone sending shivers like lightning bolts down his spine.

“Try again.”

“I’m fine here,” Alec insists, pressing impossibly closer. The sleep logged words fall from lips that lightly brush the skin by the warlock’s shoulder, a sensation similar to the flutter of eyelashes against his neck as the shadowhunter pressed against him continues to slip further into consciousness.

“Alexander, we cannot remain in bed all day. You have an institute that will notice and I have clients.”

No answer from Alec.

In fact, Magnus almost starts to wonder if Alec’s fallen back asleep when the brunette groans discontentedly and rolls over onto his back, muscles flexing and writhing beneath patterned skin as the shadowhunter lifts his arms above his head to stretch, wincing as though he forgot the action might hurt. 

“Fine. But I’m showering first,” he sighs, head falling to the side to give Magnus a lazy dissatisfied look that prompts a smile from the warlock.

“Go ahead.”

Alec hesitates a moment longer before lifting himself into a sitting position, yawning, and swinging his legs off the bed in the same fluid motion. Above the pyjama pants he wears loose on his hips, his back is stained with washed-out bruises, and littered with stark black runes, a couple fresh ones from the happenings of the day before. Magnus doesn’t cease his staring when Alec turns back to him at the door of the bathroom; now the warlock can simply - and shamelessly - admire Alec’s abdominal muscles that tense and relax with every full breath.

“I can’t wash my hair,” Alec says straightforwardly.

Magnus furrows his eyebrows till his gaze trips to Alec’s bound shoulder and the realisation covers his face with an amused expression that sets Alec off grinning too.

“I thought you said you were fine,” Magnus retorts, but he’s already on his feet observing the animated light in Alec’s eyes that tells him exactly where this is going.

“I am fine. But you were the one who said I needed to rest my shoulder.”

Fresh out of disputations, Magnus rolls his eyes, following Alec into the bathroom; all the while, try as he does, failing to shake the grin from his features.

***

“Are you going to put on any clothes?”

Alec’s question comes from the bathroom doorway causing Magnus to glance up just as he emerges in his customary demon hunting outfit: black on black on exceedingly dark green with his charcoal hair dripping wet and brushed down across his forehead. He walks without a limp now, which either means his leg healed over night or Alec's ignoring it, and while Magnus knows its likely the latter, he has to hope it isn't.

“I’m not complaining,” the shadowhunter asserts, a glint to his hazel eyes, “just if you aren’t planning to then I might text Izzy to say I’ll be late.”

Magnus finds himself grinning, glancing down at the robe he’s yet to seal closed at the front, that he slung over his shoulders after their shower no more than ten minutes ago. Its cobalt blue with intricate patterning along the seems and hangs to just bellow the cut off of his boxers. On a side note: he’s getting delightfully used to this side of Alec. The side of Alec that’s finally become confident enough in their own space to be relaxed and open about his thoughts and desires. And it only took him two full years of dating.

But Alec was supposed to be at the institute hours ago.

“You’re late enough as it is,” the warlock finds himself saying sensibly as he stands to pull the robe ties around his middle. “As for my outfit choice, I’ve set aside this morning to try and decide on my suit…”

“Finally?” Alec interrupts with a teasing weary tone. 

“I take offense…” the warlock begins.

“Magnus, do you think I care what you’re wearing if I get to marry you?” Alec says before he can get the rest of his statement out. The shadowhunter’s words are back to straightforward and honest, now that the grin has vacated his features, as he paces across the room to stand in front of his fiancé.

“You’re very sweet,” Magnus sighs with a fond smile, placing his hand lightly to Alec’s cheek who responds by leaning into the touch, eyes fluttering closed as warmth pools from the warlock’s fingertips, blue sparks glittering across the bruises there till they’ve faded entirely. “But it matters to me.”

“Then I’ll see you tonight,” Alec concludes, stepping a fraction closer to place a chaste kiss to the warlock’s lips that pathetically still causes his heart to skip a beat. Then, reluctantly, the shadowhunter retreats out of the room. Magnus listens as the loft door closes before padding out into the kitchen, hearing the soft thump of Chairman Meow leaping from the bed to the floor behind him, the cat following his path out the room eagerly.

“You want breakfast, don’t you?” He coos to the cat, stopping at one of the counters and glancing down fondly as the Chairman begins circling his feet emitting quiet mewing sounds.

A snap of his fingers sends the cat over to a china saucer in one corner as Magnus turns slowly, leaning back against the counter top. Many thoughts pester his head but the predominant one has a frustrating overall hopelessness to it: if he couldn’t choose what to wear for five whole months leading up to his wedding, what are the chances he’ll be able to make the decision in one measly morning?

It’s beginning to dawn on him that perhaps making the choice alone isn’t going to have a successful outcome. Which is part of his thinking as he returns to his bedroom seeking his phone.

“And what can I do for you today, Magnus?” The normality of Catarina’s voice is enough to instantly calm him, the mild yet ever present exasperation to her tone enough to make him smile as he perches on the end of his bed, pressing the phone to his ear with one hand while fanning his free hand out on the soft silk sheets beside him.

“I need your help,” he says, biting back his smile to get onto the pressing matters; Catrina has a habit of cutting their phone calls shorts and he's damn well going to get this predicament of his chest before then, else he’ll be back to where he started an hour ago. 

“Alright…” she replies hesitantly and Magnus can detect the edge to her voice that's waiting for him to come out with a life-threatening scenario in which she's going to have to drop everything to rush to his side. Which she would do, in a heart beat, Magnus knows; though this particular issue of his isn't exactly that scale of life-threatening... at least, not yet.

“I don’t know what to wear to my wedding.”

If Magnus recognised her exasperation before, now it’s practically palpable, her responding sigh so deep rooted, Magnus is almost convinced she might hang up on him there and then. Admittedly he's a little surprised when she doesn't.

“Magnus, you already called me about this a week age.” Her tone is flat and the way she spells out his name is so familiar, it reminds Magnus of just how many hundreds of conversations they've had like this: Magnus fussing over his love-life and Catarina responding with well rehearsed speeches of not getting to invested. Though this time, it's a little different, Magnus is most definitely invested. “Surprisingly, I have nothing new to say.”

“You don’t understand, I’ve got less than five days to go and I still have _no_ idea,” he groans, falling back against the mattress and watching his chest rise and fall with each melodramatic sigh. If Catarina can hear the desperation in his voice, she doesn’t react.

“Magnus, I’m working…” his friend says instead, a statement he’s heard too many times to count.

“Catarina, this is a serious crisis and I’m asking you, as my closest friend, for help,” he retorts quickly, so she has no choice but to hear his despair this time, before she has the chance to heartlessly hang up on him like she so often does. Perhaps Magnus can be a tad dramatic at times, but is that really reason for her to act so rudely.

Just then, he is joined by the Chairman who’s quick to clamber atop the warlock's chest and sit back heedlessly, proceeding to clean his paws like nothing in the world could possibly bother him; though such is the gloriously careless life of a cat.

“I don’t know what to say to you,” Catarina speaks up again, “have you met your fiancé? Alec doesn’t care what you wear.”

“I know Alec doesn’t care,” Magnus sighs, raising a hand to rake his fingers through the cat’s thick fur, to the felines utter satisfaction. “But I have a reputation to uphold and I will not…”

“Wear something to match Alec’s suit,” his friend interrupts, her tone perking up as if she might have finally found a way out of this conversation which Magnus can be pretty sure is no doubt her only main concern right now.  

“Alec’s suit unfortunately is also a work in progress,” the warlock replies.

“Would it really be that bad to just wear a run-of-the-mill wedding suit and go traditional?” Catarina asks then and Magnus has to try not to choke on the unhealthily large gasp he inhales, sitting bolt upright to the dazed surprise of Chairman Meow who slips onto his lap with the all to abrupt movement.

“Yes it would be bad, there’s traditional and then there’s being over casual…” before he can continue, Catarina coughs, alerting him that her patience may be wearing thin and it would be against his best interests to continue rambling.

“Look, I’m sure you’ll think of something, but I do have a job to do which means I really have to go.” And then all too quickly, the line goes eerily quiet and Magnus lets the phone drop to the mattress beside him as he glances down at Chairman Meow.

“She’s a traitor,” he informs the Chairman. Maybe a change of technique is in order.

***

“Magnus?”

When Isabelle answers her phone, Magnus lets himself breathe a sigh of relief: she won’t let him down, if anyone else understands the importance of this wedding and proper preparation, it’s his second favourite Lightwood.

“Isabelle, I was just wondering whether you’ve picked out Alexander’s suit yet?” He asks, sitting back on one of the bar stools and placing his phone, on speaker, upon the bar top. With now free hands, the warlock begins to go through the methodical process of concocting a new drink to liven up his taste buds and give him the boost of enthusiasm he's in desperate need of. 

“Yes, I picked it up this morning, why?” Isabelle says in her usual brusque way; something Magnus has always admired about the girl is that she has no desire to mess around and, like him, she enjoys getting down to the point at hand. Magnus can imagine her walking down one of the institute’s many corridors now, every step purposeful, just as straightforward and as honest as her brother; though Isabelle does everything with more fanfare and flourish, which is the complete opposite of Alec.

“Perfect, can you send me a picture?” He asks, suddenly pleased with himself that at last he could be getting somewhere, pouring out some glinting liquid into a thin stemmed glass and bringing it to his lips at the mere relieving thought of having the decision out of the way.

“Sorry, no can-do Magnus, tradition not to see the groom’s suit before the wedding.”

Magnus can hear the faint clicking of her heals come to a stop which is a clear sign that he’s supposed to be answering now though the warlock is at quite the loss for words; what did she just say?

“Isn’t the tradition that you aren’t supposed to see the _brides_ dress?” He tries, attempting to shake off this dazed yet despaired feeling and, while he’s at it, throwing back a gulp of bronzy tinted liquid that burns on its way down despite how used to the burn and heat of alcohol the warlock is.

“Well… technically yes but since there isn’t going to be a bride at this particular wedding…” her words die off with a chuckle when Magnus sighs. “Look, I can tell you it still sticks with shadowhunter tradition. I know Alec didn’t want the wedding at the institute for a reason but it’s who he is and I think it’ll make our mum happy.”

“So, the suit's gold then?” Magnus perks up. Maybe this phone call won’t be useless after all, maybe he isn’t as hopeless as he was three hours ago when he first cracked an eye open to dawn light.

“Sorry Magnus, that's all I'm saying. I’ve gotta go anyway, but thanks for taking care of my brother yesterday; whatever you did, he’s in a surprisingly good mood this morning.” And just like that, the line goes dead, hung up on, again, _twice_ in one day.

There was a time when a Shadowhunter choosing to thank him for any reason was a very rare occurrence though. Magnus has had to get used to the younger generation of Lightwood thanking him more commonly than not. And if nothing else, Isabelle’s words do manage to elicit a mental image of his Alexander which automatically fades some of his dismay.

Alec’s suit is probably gold. Does that give him any more of an idea of what he’ll wear? Not at all.

***

If Magnus hoped for a moment that his afternoon client would take his mind off wedding matters, that isn’t what happens, leaving him decidedly hope _less_. Instead, the client spends over four hours boring him to the point that Magnus spends most of the time imagining every possible shade Alec’s suit could conceivably be, and every feasible matching shade of suit that could viably go along with each.

Not that those shades don’t all come in a whole variety of designs that get him no closer to deciding what he’d actually wear on the day.

And by the end of the afternoon, once they’ve finally decided on a price for his services and signed all the necessary blood contracts, at last Magnus can shut the door behind Mr. Snoresville the client and flee to the glorious solitude of his bedroom like a vampire retreats from daylight, with Chairman Meow in toe.

However, Alec only left after nine this morning, which makes it more than highly likely he’ll stay late at the institute and get home long after dusk, leaving Magnus alone with the Chairman; the cat positively delighted at being carried into bed for once and continuing to purr noisily as he curls closely against the warlock’s chest. One hand clutching a cup of steaming coffee, Magnus drops the other to scratch at the cat’s ears and stroke his velvet soft head.

Whether or not he intends to stay awake till Alexander returns home, he doesn’t make it that far; falling asleep sometime after finishing his coffee and inbetween picking up a book which contents end up being only half as appealing as the thought of shutting his eyes. Therefore, he’s only half aware of the hands that later undress him tentatively before pulling the covers up and around his body, breath coming to tickle the nap of his neck as Alec slips into bed behind him.

He can’t be sure whether it’s in his dreams, but when he feels Alec sling an arm around his waist to pull him closer, he interlocks their fingers, humming happily and slipping back into a deep sleep. He'll decide on his suit tomorrow. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll hopefully have the next chapter up within a couple of days but please tell me your thoughts so far :)


	3. In Four Days Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Light morning conversation, an irritating client and a date dinner: This is how Magnus spends his time four days till the wedding.

Every time he comes undone, every time he feels himself melt entirely into his shadowhunters grip, every time he feels his world shrink to just Alexander... Magnus tells himself he wont lose control. Yet every time Brooklyn's ever-constant noise begins fading to muffled underwater sound; every time all care or concern that may weigh upon a high warlock's shoulders starts to melt away; every time his shadowhunter, his Alexander, becomes all that matters: Magnus does.

Not that he even feels the glamour drop. Not when his focus is consumed by the raven-haired boy under his fingertips; not when his focus is fixated on hazel eyes that look back at him with a dazed kind of wonder. When Alec's in his arms, Magnus doesn't notice much else at all. But he knows the glamours dropped when Alec is pushed over the edge, when that wonder morphs to sheer ecstasy.

Thinking back to the first time Alec saw his cat eyes for all their golden shine and demonic significance, there's little reason for Magnus to desire hiding them. Alec had been forth right about thinking them beautiful then, and besides: plenty of others have told him the same over the decades.

Still, the memory of a few who'd mattered, who'd told him differently, has always been enough to make Magnus feel more comfortable with the glamour.

That said, he's found himself dropping it in conflict with pompous shadowhunters before, who insist on belittling him enough that Magnus even embraces the pet warlock status just to demonstrate that cats have claws, and his are sharp... metaphorically speaking. If they wish to treat him like an animal, he'll behave like one with untamed ferocity. But then he's using them as a mark of the thing he fears the most: his demon blood. 

All things considered, his eyes aren't something he displays with pride. So keeping the glamour dropped in casual circumstances, around the loft and in the company of Alexander, was uncharted territory, and a mere suggestion on the shadowhunters behalf to begin with. A curiously daunting suggestion that became a reality shortly before their engagement, though he's yet to fall accustomed to it - almost six months later.

To have his cat eyes staring back at him in the mirror, with Alec just behind him, is wonderfully normal... theoretically. He can't help feeling slightly apprehensive. However, apprehension feels like his daily disposition at the moment since - and he hasn't been able to stop reminding himself from the moment he awoke - only four measly days remain till he and Alec are bound by law.

Right now Alec lies splayed horizontally across their bed, fully dressed and sighing intermittently as he watches Magnus across the room, idly through half lidded eyes. When Magnus does choose to sit at his dressing table and do his makeup by hand, he's found that Alec will most often decide to stay. Stay to watch Magnus' methodical movements with lazy curiosity, all in the name of postponing his departure to the institute as long as possible. Though every time Alec has done this, he's never once broken the silent ritual with a question.

"Why do you wear makeup?" Alec mutters, all at once pulling the warlock from tunnelling downward thoughts and causing him to cast his eyes to Alec's reflection and pause midway through applying dark pigment to his left eyelid.

"Why do you ask?" The warlock queries, resuming his work but keeping his eyes trained to the shadowhunters reflection.

Alec seems to debate his own reasoning, fingers drumming against his chest where his hands rest upon it, before answering: "It looks nice, but you look just as nice out of it," he begins thoughtfully, coaxing a grin onto the warlock's face, Alec turning his gaze to the ceiling, "but I've never asked what made you start wearing it in the first place."

"Well it's fun, and I've had the same face for centuries so I like changing things up a bit," he says truthfully. Makeup has always been an expressive thing for the warlock: Something that has made him more confident in some circumstances, but that he enjoys more than anything else. Therapeutic in the application, compelling in the available variation, alluring in the provision of a safeguard...

"Sometimes you do it with magic," Alec says, wistful tone leading Magnus to guess the statement stems from Alec thinking out loud rather than him searching for any reply. Still the thought perks the warlocks interest: He's only began to sit down and apply it by hand daily in the last few months. Supposedly he goes through phases of impatience that result in him using magic instead, but with the mayhem of wedding planning in his life right now, the familiar task of applying it by hand is a relaxing one.

"Magic is quicker, but if I have the time, I like to sit down and do it. That's half the fun of it," Magnus says because he feels the need to explain it at least part way to his endearing, oblivious fiancé. His choice today of smoky sliver pigment may be a stark contrast to the gold of his eyes, but Magnus has always avoided lacklustre looks.

And while his eyes _can_ remind him of scorching memories, Alec has begun gradually soothing the burns - knowingly or not. Now analysing them in the mirror can almost be about deciding if they work with each eyeshadow, not concluding how distasteful he finds them on that particular day.

His own curiosity fuel the next words that slip from his lips: "Which does Alexander prefer?"

"I love your makeup but..." Alec's words fade out with a trace of uncertainty.

"But?" Magnus prompts, eager to hear the shadowhunters honest opinion since Alec doesn't recognise the concept of lying to flatter a person; an admirable quality and one Magnus finds decidedly refreshing, despite how honesty is just in Alec's general nature.

"I love _just you_ a little more," the shadowhunter completes and a smile breaks out across the warlocks features. These may be the longest four days of his existence.

When Alec's phone begins to buzz from somewhere on the bed's side table, the shadowhunter is hauling himself into a sitting position to retrieve it and Magnus tries to refocus on the task at hand: his left eye is categorically darker than his right.

"Isabelle?" He asks, starting to touch up the right side to balance the tones.

"Yeah, she wants to know if Im going to be late today," Alec returns, flinging the phone carelessly onto the bed as he returns to facing Magnus, this time sat upright.

"What does the institute and darling Isabelle demand of you today?" He has to admit, this is probably what Magnus appreciates most: getting to ask Alec about what his day will entail, feeling like they'll sink into marriage effortlessly, and relishing the absurdly mundane things.

"There've been two major demon attacks in the last forty-eight hours," Alec answers as if the concept wouldn't strike fear into the hearts of most, "but we can't do much until we know what's behind them."

"So, you'll be doing what exactly?" Magnus finds himself enquiring as he turns from the mirror to face his fiancé, finally satisfied that his eyeshadow sufficiently matches.

"Monitoring every road and back street throughout New York in case there's another attack, and analysing the previous ones for signs of an objective and motive," the shadowhunter returns.

"Sounds thrilling."

Alec snorts. "What about you?"

"I have two clients," Magnus sighs, "the first one of which I can't say I'm looking forward to seeing." Just thinking back to yesterday afternoon sends a cold, unpleasant feeling of dread to his core, but Alec cocks his head questioningly.

"I met with him yesterday; human, business man, voice with the same tone as a lawn mower, spent four hours discussing the logistics of his 'enquiry'," Alec huffs a laugh at Magnus air quotes. "He was quaint really, he made me sign a blood contract. I do the spell this morning but I'd rather bathe Chairman Meow," Magnus finishes and the shadowhunter grins, eyes flickering downwards.

Magnus has only ever tried washing the cat without the use of magic once, at the tail end of an exhausting day when all he'd needed was a chance to recharge but after the Chairman found his way under the bar, Magnus hadn't been able to justify leaving his fur soaked with liquor considering the cats habit of grooming himself. However, the Chairman had yelped so loudly in protest of the bath that afterwards, Magnus swears his ears rung for days.

"What about your second client?" Alec prompts.

"Oh, Ms. Harris, she's routine, I replenish the warding of her house every six months," Magnus dismisses, standing and pacing over to his wardrobe door.

"She's human but her sons a lycanthrope who has a habit of bringing home downworlders." Retrieving a loose, satin shirt of maroon colouring from his collection of many, Magnus drops the robe from his shoulders. "He brought home a seelie who hexed her daughter and she's been wary of them since."

"Seelies?"

"Downworlders."

"So, she hires a warlock to ward her house?" Alec asks sceptically.

Pulling on some tight-fitting trousers Magnus turns once again to face Alec, "Darling, my job isn't to judge the client, it's to do what's asked of me and be paid a ridiculous sum of money to do it, the woman _is_ the widow of a decidedly wealthy man."

With a grin, Alec stands, quickly covering the space between them till he's almost stood in Magnus personal space: "So how long will all that take?"

"Client one, seeing as my only frame of reference is yesterday, could take all morning, but it shouldn't take more than half an hour to finish Ms. Harris' warding," Magnus answers, stepping forward and letting his eyes flicker across Alec's handsome features.

"That means you'll be here if I come home early from the institute?" The shadowhunter mumbles, only a small grin betraying his smugness. In fact, more than ever, this morning Alec looks love wrecked. Fondness so deeply engraved in the shine of his hazel eyes that the warlock can't trace a lie on his face.

Magnus knows this look well. Mainly because he's bared it once too often over many centuries. When the disease that starts safely guarded within the cage of your chest, spreads till rationality is abandoned completely. And so is the plague of love, as deadly as it is intoxicating when all the people he's loved before have never felt the same.

Never... _until_ love sick Alexander, staring so fondly into the beast-like eyes that once cost Magnus his heart and his innocence; never until smitten Alexander choose not to leave, to instead risk his heart with Magnus while the warlock did the same.

Maybe he really could get used to leaving the glamour dropped, appreciate his eye like he may have done once with the help of Alec and his devastatingly fond stare. If eyes as wide and pure as his lovers could stare upon them with only love, how could he not at least try to do the same?

"That could be the best thing you've said all morning," Magnus declares, leaning a small fraction forward to place a kiss against the shadowhunters lips.

Alec reciprocates, deepening the kiss, hands landing on the warlocks hips, bleeding electric currents through his fingertips and setting the kiss alight, every touch like a third degree burn. This feeling - their mouths heated and moving in perfect synchronisation - is as though kissing Alec is succumbing to a desire that never leaves his chest. They feel magnetised.

Coffee from their breakfast still lingers on their tongues, but each kiss is slower than the last, and Magnus drinks in the feeling of having Alec this close: noses buried in cheeks, foreheads pressed, trespassing fingers and eager hands, familiar yet all inciting.

He isn't sure how long the kiss lasts, kissing Alexander has always felt timeless, but they break eventually, out of breath and chests heaving in similar fashion, both baring foolish, unshakeable grins. And, thanks to Alec, the day is barely started and his shirt is wrinkled to hell.

Not that Magnus cares: "Since you'll be early, perhaps we could actually _go out_ for dinner tonight?" He suggests, staggeringly breathless for more than one reason.

All Alec manages is a nod, pulling Magnus into him again.

***

However good his mood starts off, clients always seem to be remarkably skilled in the art of hauling it down to reality. A skill Mr. Knightsbridge seems to have honed to perfection. It had all been going _reasonably_ well, though Magnus was right to assume that the spell would take a while. The contracts had been brought out, he'd begun the spell, he'd let himself entertain the thought that perhaps this morning would pass mostly unhinged... and then everything had gone terribly wrong.

"Sunday then?" The man barks, eyes enraged, disposition fuming, as he sits perched at the end of one of the loft sofas. Though his upper lip trembles slightly, the rest of his features are rubbery in their arduousness, like he's spent so much of his life scowling, the rumpled terrain of his forehead is an eternal feature on his wrinkled face.

"I'm afraid I have a wedding to attend on Sunday," Magnus replies coolly, "maybe we can arrange for me to complete the spell again another time."

Of course, experience dealing with unsatisfied clients is something that Magnus has centuries of. Each condescending one as demanding as the last, consistent with their professional masks that drop to reveal the supercilious monster the moment something doesn't meet their utmost approval. Being barked at is hardly new territory for the warlock, though its always exhausting.

"Who's wedding?" The man demands, voice no less booming, as if he might have the authority to insist Magnus not go. His suit sags over his shoulders but strains around his bear belly, blue eyes striking in their fury, and Magnus considers in that moment naming him the most unflattering client he's had in a while.

Because of this, he's careful to hold the man's gaze straight on as he replies surely: "Mine."

However temporarily, the answer appears to flaw Mr. Knightsbridge quiet entirely, his dull eyes darkening in the shadow of furrowed eyebrows. Magnus watches on as the clogs slowly churn to a halt behind his vacant gaze before picking up speed again, a light finally switching on in his head.

"Can wizards get married?"

Of all the statements he braces himself for, this one surprises Magnus - almost enough for a grin to slip onto his face. Instead, he grimaces, sinking to a seated position in the chair opposite the man, too tired to bother correcting him and beyond wanting to answer him: "Is there any reason we shouldn't?"

"Is she another wizard?" Mr. Knightsbridge commands instead, the inaccuracy in every aspect of the statement enough to make the warlock disregard it completely. 

"No, _he_ isn't." Magnus replies, lifting a decanter from the drinks table conveniently situated by his chair and pouring a generous amount of bronze liquid into a glass, deciding in that moment that if this conversation is to continue, he's going to need it. In his mind, he dares the other man to find fault in his statement. 

The reply again seems to take the man whole minutes to process, like he doesn't know which part offends him most; his features becoming so tightly contorted that the warlock can no longer decide what emotion they depict and can only assume its displeasure, taking into account the uncomfortable silence.

"But you're immortal!" Knightsbridge declares eventually, almost patronising enough to sound as though he really believes Magnus might have forgotten.

"I'm aware." Is the sum of an answer the warlock can surrender, lifting the glass to his lips.

"But it's illogical! He'll only die and essentially the time in which you'll both be of similar aged appearance is even more limited, the faction of a lifetime is too small to be beneficial. He's only dooming himself to a marriage that will surely combust, and you of all people should know..."

Deciding another word could possibly urge him into doing something more than regrettable in the unforeseeable future, Magnus stands with such haste, Knightsbridge visually flinches: "As sorry as I am that the spell didn't work to your satisfaction, I'm afraid I will not be able to see you again." Extending a hand to the man, the warlock pulls him to his feet: "Thank you Mr. Kni..."

"Excuse you! I am the client!" The man exclaims furiously, pulling away at once, "And I will..."

"-be leaving now, my thoughts exactly." Magnus interrupts.

"Under no circumstances until we've arranged a suitable time for you to complete the task I paid you to do." Resisting against his ushering hands, the man turns to Magnus in the loft's front room, frowning so deeply, his mouth appears more like the permanent seam line of his face.

The warlock can feel sparks licking at his fingers, burning with desire to lash out at the man's ignorance... stupidity... the pure nerve to sit in Magnus' home and declare _him_ illogical... HIM: The High Warlock of Brooklyn. 

"Mister Knightsbridge, you stand in my house and lecture me against marrying the love of my life, four days before my wedding. I must say, I'm shocked to see you so surprised when I say: Get. Out. Of _my_. Apartment." Flicking his wrist, the front door swings wide open.

"You'll be hearing from my lawyers..." he begins, stumbling back nevertheless with a petrified look snagged in his ugly, murky eyes. "You won't get away with this..." His words filter out into the general noise of Brooklyn by the time the warlock returns to the lounge and, more importantly, his drink. 

Dropping back into his chair with a resounding sigh, Magnus glances up to catch Chairman Meow appearing around the doorway. The cat, after obviously waiting for Knightsbridge to leave, similarly to Magnus actually, proceeds to prance across the room on deft paws and make a clear, clean pounce upwards to land on the armrest of his chair. 

"You despised him too?" Magnus asks the cat, raking a tired hand through the Chairman's fur who at once begins to purr contentedly.

The warlock concludes that he'll finish his drink before he leaves for Ms. Harris', let the warm buzz of alcohol settle in his veins. At least Alec's home early today. That knowledge can be the salvaging aspect that gets him through the afternoon. 

***

Magnus tries not to sound too negative when he recounts his day as they walk along Brooklyn's downtown streets. There really is no spinning his feelings for Mr. Knightsbridge but the warlock chooses to leave out the details of their parting conversation as he summarises it to Alec. Ms Harris had been as he expected, routine, the spell quick, meaning he'd returned home not long after he'd left. Which he tells Alec too.

When they arrive at the restaurant, in silence, they find a table tucked away from prying eyes, in a darkened corner to themselves. The ambiance is quiet, to the warlock's appreciation, though already being in Alec's company alone has started to unwind the coiled anxiety in his stomach and relieve the tension of his shoulders.

Only once their drinks arrive, does Alec finally break the quiet: "My mother arrived from Idris today," he starts slowly, as if trying to judge his fiancé's reaction before continuing, cautious eyes looking back at Magnus across the table. If this is how the evening is to start, the warlock is glad he ordered a high alcohol concentration for pre-dinner drinks.

"Oh, so she's coming?" He asks casually, ring adorned fingers tracing the rim of a glass filled with gleaming liquor of deep navy colouring. This particular concoction contains more vodka than the warlock would usually opt for, as well as a blueberry twist, though today has slowly become tiresome enough to need it.

"Yeah, she..." when Alec's words momentarily fade out, Magnus doesn't expect the smile that begins to edge across the shadowhunter's features, "she's coming, she's... _excited_ to be coming."

"Maryse Lightwood is excited to come to _our_ wedding?" The warlock repeats doubtfully, returning his glass back onto the table top in fear of dropping it, Alec's words ringing in his head and taunting him in their absurdity. Did Alec really just confirm that his mother might have at last blessed their relationship?

"She wanted to see me as soon as she arrived, I know she said yes to the invitation but I still didn't think she'd be happy about it," Alec begins to explain, fingers drumming nervously against the wooden surface on which he leans against, gaze restless though he looks back at Magnus for the most part, lips still raised in a hesitant smile:

"So, I went to see her and she started talking about how she was wrong to have ever said I shamed the Lightwood name." Magnus can hear his heartbeat pounding inside his head, but with every word from Alec's lips, a breath passes his a little easier. "She said that I make her proud everyday by fighting for what I believed in and going after what I wanted. My mothers looking forward to our wedding."

"I don't know what to say," the warlock stutters after a beat, though the grin that's overtaken his face speaks of how its pure amazement that dictates his speechlessness.

"I know." Alec's grin has shifted from hesitant to certain, all agitation now melted from his temperament, as though the news had been eating away at him the entirety of their walk to the restaurant. "She forgave me for what happened with Lydia, but after two years... I didn't think she'd ever fully accepting this... us."

Reaching across the table, the warlock seals their hands, relishing the touch of metal on Alec's left hand as he recognises the overwhelming relief now pooling in his chest.

Alec Lightwood lives for those around him: A parabati, a brother, a son, and a shadowhunter. Every title he fights, bleeds and strains to live up to, about protecting those he loves. Because in the time Magnus has known him, he's learnt that Alec loves fiercely, with everything he has to give and no less. To be on the receiving side of such love had terrified Magnus... but it also revived him.

The thought that Alec would have to pretend to be ok on his wedding day under the disappointed watch of his mother had broken Magnus' heart. Now watching the joy on his lover's features at his mothers acceptance is enough to make the warlock feel weightless. Perhaps four remaining nights shall flitter past faster under such knowledge. Perhaps their hearts may make the time worth it.

 


	4. In Three Days Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A fight, a failed shopping escapade, and a make up <3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promised no angst but this is resolved by the end of the chapter. I’m sorry. Couple’s fight. It’s important. It’s means they love each other… 
> 
> Also, this chapter contains my original character so if you haven’t read part 1 of this series, Darcy Williams is a mundane who has become close friends with Magnus and Alec. Magnus explains it in the chapter anyway. As always, hope you enjoy this chapter, beware, it's late, and I'm tired, so there are probably plenty of mistakes but thank you for reading :)

It's _illogical_.

If Magnus is honest, if he dismisses the butterflies that still flutter in his gut every time Alec so much as smiles, or puts to good use over five hundred years of relationship experience, he agrees with Mr. Knightsbridge: Marrying Alexander is probably one of the most illogical things he's ever considered. It surpasses the realms of daft into ones of pure insanity, and yet the thought fails to bring with it even an ounce of regret.

There are more than a generous handful of all-inconclusive reasons why marrying Alec is predominantly illogical. For one: their ancestors have been opposed for centuries. At second: their rival races _still are_ , for all extensive purposes, never mind the pitifully optimistic introduction of the accords in recent decades. Three: there is of course the small inconvenience that one of them is immortal while the other is not, and remaining reasons range from their blood to their gender, juxtaposing their love and setting the world and its expectations against them.

Better yet, such reasons stand valid considering they've felt the _very real_ repercussions caused by these minor differences many times over the years of their relationship, when the devastating waves from their contrasting worlds fell to shore with a fierce tide that almost swept them away from each other. Of course, they've always found their way back, like the determination of gravity and the wish of celestial beings refuses to let them part for good.

But just because they've made it this far doesn't make marrying each other any more logical.

Be that as it may, Magnus is counting the hours, which are still far too plentiful. See, immortality has this certain side effect: following logic became boring to Magnus many moons ago and quite honestly, the inciting feeling that continues to well up inside him with every second that ticks by causing the wedding to edge that much closer, significantly outweighs the illogical aspect.

Ironically - and he's sure the knowledge would probably cause the man's cheeks to flush crimson with fury - the words Mr. Knightsbridge posed against him yesterday have only made Magnus all the more confident in his decision to marry Alexander Gideon Lightwood, for all the shadowhunter's reckless selflessness, and inherent honesty.

Not that this newfound confidence rids the warlock of the dulled irritation settled heavy in his muscles, caused by dear Knightsbridge himself and his stupidity to even think for a second that he had any right to inform Magnus of his more than irrelevant opinion - The mere nerve of it!

Consequently, Magnus had been positively gleeful accepting Alec's offer of a back massage this morning.

Alec is rather great at giving massages, to the warlock's initial surprise. Bearing in mind his opinion is well founded since he's had full body messages from some of the most renowned masseuses the mundane and downworld offer, in many a corner of the world, over many centuries.

As someone with impeccable aim, Alec's not heavy-handed. While the warlock wouldn't exactly describe him as elegant, Alec's far from inept, as Magnus (probably stereotypically) expected from a reckless soldier. Though his hands are usually drawn behind his back if he can help it, they're always delicate regarding Magnus.

The first time Alec's fingers fell to the warlock's shoulders and begun kneading the tired muscles there at the end of a day that had left Magnus vastly drained of energy, he'd voiced his delight as well as his surprise, but Alec had dismissed him at the time, passing it off as something he'd learnt when indulging Isabelle after strenuous hunts.

But Magnus' catlike response - the warlock practically purring under Alec's skilful hands - has made it so that Alec will frequently offer a massage when Magnus shows the slightest signs of being weary in the wake of a taxing day... Or, apparently, in the morning if Magnus happens to be more reluctant getting out of bed than usual. 

"You're really tense," Alec observes out of the blue, stirring Magnus enough for him to crack open an eye, considering he's been half way to slumber ever since Alec started manipulating the tight muscles of his back, all coiled and knotted with frustration left behind from yesterday.

"Blame Mr. Knightsbridge," Magnus mumbles back against the pillow cushioned beneath his head, letting his eyes fall closed again in order to enjoy every physical sensation to the fullest: Alec straddling his hips, pleasant weight against his lower back and hands slowly working the muscles around his shoulder blades in a beyond agreeable manner. There are few place he'd rather be.

Alec acknowledges the warlock’s statement with a ‘hmm’, not unusually quiet and motion unfaltering, though Magnus can tell by his lack of words that something’s praying on Alec’s mind, something he’s hesitant to voice aloud.

With all these uncoordinated thoughts running rampant in his head about Knightsbridge and the man’s stupid, irrelevant, thoughtless words, Magnus has a wealth of reasons for not wanting Alec to start asking questions he might actually answer. After all, they don’t need to linger on such matters as illogicality so close to the wedding. But at the same time, he can’t help feeling concerned about Alec’s silence.

“Penny for your thoughts?” The warlock surrenders in a casual tone, letting pestering concern get the better of him while simultaneously attempting to erase Knightsbridge from his focus in favour of thoughts of his Alexander instead, particularly avoiding notions of how Alec and the unpleasant man coincide painfully with mortal years.

“Didn’t you say you signed a contract, should I be worried?” Alec wastes no time in replying, straightaway getting to the matter at hand in a way the warlock’s had to get used to. There is no dawdling with Alec Lightwood, and if you aren’t accustomed to his bluntness, Magnus is pretty sure it’s whiplash worthy. But it’s effective. It makes Alec a good leader.

So, Magnus does him the favour of replying with a response clipped to the reassuring facts: “Not at all: Contract specifically stated I was required to do the spell, nothing about redoing it.” Magnus may find signing contracts tiring and unnecessary, but he never takes them casually, he’s signed enough of them to be far too familiar with the unseemly cost of doing such a thing.

The contracts he signed for Knightsbridge in particular had a lot in common with the man himself, they said an awful lot that meant very little.

“You’re sure?” Alec asks as his hands pause momentarily, prompting Magnus to whine and Alec to release a tired chuckle and resume his movements, working at the knots collected along the warlock’s spine. _'_ _He really knows what he’s doing'_   Magnus thinks lazily.

Maybe it’s a soldier’s intuition - a soldier who’s tied his parabati back together at the seams and seen his sister back to full health after the worst missions-gone-wrong - that gives Alec the knowledge of just which muscles ache the most, and just how much pressure to apply, and Magnus can’t help appreciating his fiancé a little more, if that were possible.

“There's only so much damage he can do anyway,” Magnus adds with a blissed-out sigh, turning his head and humming contentedly into the pillow, his next words muffled: “you are talking to the high warlock.”

“I know,” the shadowhunter starts, and then all at once he’s rolled off and onto the mattress beside Magnus, Chairman Meow appearing from seemingly nowhere to squirm his way under Alec’s hand who begins scratching the feline mindlessly, to the Chairman’s utmost glee. “I just remember what happened with Clary and Iris.”

At that, Magnus pulls himself up onto his elbows to fully look at his fiancé, if not just to show his dissatisfied expression that's fast becoming a look of betrayal as Alec continues to pamper the cat: “Alexander, I have signed a great many contracts in my life, and they're not nearly as messy as blood oaths because all contracts have loopholes. Not that I'll even need one in this case.”

Alec considers this, before nodding. A nod that says whether he likes it or not, he’s taking Magnus’ word with this and will put the concern out of his head for now – something which Alec hardly ever did when the warlock met him, but something he’s become increasingly better at doing during their relationship. Magnus knows how trust is something that grows between two people, he’s simply happy that Alec’s idly let it – the shadowhunter isn’t one to instigate trust with many outside of his family.

For a while, they lie in silence, nothing but the deep purrs of Chairman Meow and the faint buzz of engines from Brooklyn streets filling the air, bronze with rising sunlight. Mornings filled with predominantly nothing are definitely Magnus' favourite mornings and in the lazy atmosphere, they both seem to be frivolously neglecting the demands of a dawning day.

It’s Alec’s words that at last pierce the thick sluggish ether surrounding them, though they are regretful even as he mutters them: “About what he said to you... about _us_...”

“Alexander, I'm really trying to forget yesterday morning even happened at all...”

“Magnus, we can't ignore it,” Alec insists, hazel eyes burning in the golden light, setting fire to their whiskey gold flecks and melting the darker tones so his eyes shine with unspoken emotion. As for those plethora of reasons Magnus has for not wanting Alec to start asking questions he might actually answer? This is reason number one: Alec’s painfully beautiful eyes.

Do they really need to linger on such matters so close to the wedding when they're the eyes looking back at him?

“I see little reason why we need to address it currently,” Magnus returns innocently, rolling onto his side and watching Alec’s eyes trail his skin, across his ribs and down to where silk pyjama bottoms hang low on the warlock’s hips. The shadowhunter appears hesitant to argue, something that allows Magnus to breathe a sigh of relief. Then the lazy atmosphere is shattered once more with the sound of Alec's phone.

Alec shifts where he lies to reach for the side table, Magnus observing him through half-lidded eyes while his fingers filter through the Chairman’s fur languidly. “Does Isabelle feel it a necessity to text you every morning? It’s barely eight.”

Before Magnus can process the movement, Alec’s hauled himself out of their bed only to grab the first set of jeans he recognises off the floor. His hast has sure signs of fluster, his fingers fumbling with the zip as he gets the jeans to around his middle, and his unmistakable agitation has Magnus sat up almost instantly.

“There's been an attack on a mundane restaurant; Izzy needs backup,” Alec half stutters, half breaths, half of an explanation that has pretty much all the justification present for why he went from calm to frantic up in a matter of seconds.

“Alexander, I thought you said no more missions this week,” Magnus says, eyebrows furrowing as he watches the shadowhunter pull a shirt over his head, his resulting hair in utter disarray.

“I know...” Alec begins, distress wavering as he finally fixes his eyes on Magnus, “this is different, Magnus, something's up.”

The words are much more than simple words. They imply so much more than a simple demon attack and they encompass something that Magnus wants to deny more than anything: An attack like this has been imminent for days. This, Alec returning to mortal danger only posed by pending war, has been forthcoming even before the day Alec came home broken and beyond exhaustion.

Magnus has known Alec long enough to know when something’s about to blow up in his world, this is exactly what Isabelle’s cryptic words had been suggesting the day she’d stood alongside Jace in the loft, and told Alec they’d handle it while he rested.

If Magnus is honest, he’s been expecting this. So, what’s worse? He’s been expecting it, and he’s been praying everything would wait to explode till after Sunday.

“Alexander, if Isabelle is there, the institute has already sent their best,” Magnus expresses, surprised to hear the anxious edge to his words, but feeling anxious all the same for Alec to listen to them as the shadowhunter pivots on his heel, pocketing his phone in the same motion, and begins moving towards the doorway.

“It's just one mission,” Alec justifies with a deep exhale, eyes drawn down and away from Magnus.

“It was just one mission that almost got you killed a couple of days ago, or do you forget?” The anger now brimming each word falling from his lips is entirely unintentional, but so are the words themselves and yet they keep coming. Like something from deep inside the warlock has wrapped around his lungs to poison each breath with bitterness and lace his voice with raw emotion.

“Magnus, I can't... I have to do this.” Alec’s tone is contrastingly apologetic, but he recoils from the confrontation as he turns his back to Magnus as though if he caught sight of the warlock, he’d crumble.

“Alexander!” The single word pierces the air with desperation and it’s finally enough to stop Alec where he stands.

The tension remains palpable, as Alec’s head drops: “I'm sorry... I... I have to go.” He lingers a second longer, too pained to turn around, before pushing forward as though he wades through setting concrete, getting to the door, clinging to it like a life line, then disappearing through it leaving one last sentence in his wake: “Izzy needs me.”

***

If there’s one thing an immortal being ought to get used to, it’s waiting. ‘Immortal’ by mere definition is ‘living forever’ and forever provides an awful long time for things to be done. Patience should be mandatory among the attributes of any immortal. But just because he’s had centuries to become well acquainted with it, doesn’t mean Magnus likes waiting any more than the average mortal.

These are unique circumstances, of course. This is waiting for his fiancé to come home, with the added pestering and unremitting prospect of Alec _never_ coming home polluting his thoughts.

Alec’s been on plenty of missions throughout their relationship, and plenty that have seen him close to death. Perhaps what fuel the sickening anticipation that Magnus feels right now is the sheer proximity to the wedding, or maybe it’s the all too fresh memory of Alec loping through the loft door only three nights ago on the precipice of death itself.

Either way, it’s clear the warlock can’t stay at the loft, or be left alone with his thoughts, till Alec’s inevitable return – because _it is_ inevitable. He’s in dire need of some distraction. Which was his reasoning behind texting Darcy Williams ten minutes ago: a mundane with a remarkably fresh outlook on life, always delighted to let Magnus exploit it every time his darkens slightly. 

Darcy who just so happens to be the very same part-time stripper who kissed Alec at Jace's bachelor party five months ago, and who'd been extremely apologetic about it despite how Magnus had found the whole thing rather humorous. At least, he'd been fully aware of Alec's dread beforehand of even attending the party, so the fact that dancing with and kissing a female stripper should be the outcome of the night in Alec's unique circumstances had seemed a little too comedic on fate’s part.

The real circumstances were a little less comedic. Alec had only let the girl kiss him in the least violent attempt of escaping a situation in which Darcy had been cornered, in the alley outside the club said party took place in, by two meatheads of... _questionable_ intention. In that case, Magnus had found the affair rather characteristically heroic on Alec's part and entirely understandable on Darcy’s behalf seeing as she hadn’t even known Magnus existed at the time.

In all, the night had left Magnus impossibly fonder of his boyfriend, and with a liking to the girl who'd wiggled past Alec's distaste for mundanes and succeeded in planting herself in the Shadowhunter’s good graces – a rather remarkable feat considering her efforts spanned a single night.

Magnus had met her the day after, at Jace and Clary’s wedding itself, and immediately found himself with a penchant for the girl of whiskey gold hair, deeply lit, sky blue eyes, freckles like constellations across rosy cheeks and a smile to light every feature aflame.

But he’d fallen to like her most of all because of how she’d talked. Talked as though life bended at her will, as though the bad happened with the sole purpose of making her stronger. She’d fleet past stories of her tragic upbringing and find reason for losing her mother young, eyes gleaming as brightly as the coloured tattoos tracing her skin.

Magnus has known many mundanes over the centuries. He’s fallen in love with some, though secrecy poisons all love eventually and the downworld is no place for the human blooded. He’s befriended many, because he’s found that humanity is never without a resounding hope, untainted by the knowledge of demons.

But Darcy’s a new kind of refreshing. If anyone can take his mind off Alec, soothe his unease and apprehension and lighten his mood radically, it’s her.

***

“So, your wedding is in three days’ time and you still have no idea what you’re wearing?” Darcy asks, with an air of disbelief to her tone as she turns to raise her eyebrows at him.

They walk side by side passing shop windows and displays, and while they technically have a destination in mind, Magnus doesn’t have high hopes for the Wedding Shop they’re seeking, so his eyes graze each display that they pass. 

In actuality, he can’t remember the last time he went out to shop for clothes. Much more easily done with the snap of a finger, but that’s not an option in the company of Darcy and he’s banking on her opinion, seeing as none of his other ‘so-called-friends’ seem to care in the slightest.

“That is the issue at hand,” he replies airily, letting his gaze inspect each display window with care and growing despair. It’s only technically three days because the wedding itself is after dusk on Sunday, for obvious reasons taking to account requirements of some of their guests. But it’s already midday. If he’s only awake on average fourteen hours a day, he has less that thirty-five hours to…

“Magnus?!” Darcy’s voice draws him from thought. “You realise I know nothing about clothes, right?” She says, with a passing gesture to the loose white top that hangs off her shoulders and cuts off above the belt of her high-waisted jeans. It’s a charming arrangement, simple as it may be, but he sees little correlation to her words of negative implication.

As if reading the confusion effortlessly from his features, her expression morphs to a teasing exasperation: “How many times have you seen me wear this?”

It clicks with her words: the arrangement, sweet as it is, is one that the warlock has seen on her countless times, alternated with her few different flowy tops, in various block colours.

“I needed the company,” he admits, letting his eyes wonder from Darcy back to the shops scattered around them, at last spotting the one with his desired theme. “And I find you refreshing and calming to be around.” 

The shop is just what you’d expect from a wedding shop: an off-white sign, a display window of lacy dresses, and an interesting choice of ornate, flowery wallpaper, just to add to the overall ostentation. The shop itself – displayed in barely legible cursive on said off-white sign – is called ‘Fifty Shades of White’.

“Thanks…?” Darcy starts hesitantly, an indecisive expression furrowing her eyebrows. She’s clearly considering something, but just before they reach the shop door, the girl stops, hauling Magnus to a halt too: “What did Alec do?”

She sounds sure enough that the words are already halfway to anxious; so confident in her conclusion that she doesn’t bother posing the question as a guess, but rather as a sincere inquiry, desiring a sincere answer.

“Is it that obvious?” The warlock doesn’t concern himself with turning back to her as he says this, stepping instead through the door of the, so far, tasteless wedding shop that has sadly become one of his last hopes. They’re barely through the door and Magnus spots another sign hung above the display of suits set back from the window, in an alternate section of the floor space, wallpaper a vulgar grey pattern instead. It reads ‘Well Groomed’.

Darcy barely considers his question before answering: “Yeah, it’s that obvious.” Then snickers as her eyes fall upon the subsequent sign, clearly more amused by how Magnus visibly flinches reading it. If this wasn’t his last hope, he would have turned around and left there and then.

“Really, Magnus, what’s up? You’re starting to scare me,” Darcy says, turning to the warlock as her amusement subsides, expression morphing to genuine worry and hand coming up to rest on the warlock’s forearm.

“I’m currently terrified I may never see Alexander again…” His words fade off as soon as he hears them back in his own ears, reverberating off garish pink and grey wallpaper, and all the more distressing out loud as opposed to in his head.

“But you don’t know if you’ll want to hug him or hit him when you do?” Darcy says, as usual, reading the warlock seamlessly and more effortlessly than anyone he’s ever known.

When he’d mentioned it to the blonde on one occasion months back, she’d chuckled with blue eyes gleaming. With the buzz of alcohol blushing her checks, Darcy had slurred about working in clubs since her twelfth birthday, and what better way to learn people inside out than when they’re drunk and spilling the minds mindlessly.

“Magnus…”

“It’s selfish of me to ask him not to do his job?” The words are out before he has a chance to think them through but Darcy doesn’t look taken aback in the slightest. Instead, she paces forward, turning her eyes to where her hands drag over suit material as they venture further into the shop.

“He risks his life,” she starts, quoting the vague explanation Alec’s given the girl on a number of occasions, “so what if it’s daily, that doesn’t mean you don’t have the right to be worried about him,” Darcy flicks her eyes back up to meet the warlock's, “I wouldn’t expect you to be reasonable about it.”

“But you think I’m unreasonable?” He returns, far more concerned with watching Darcy than sparing a passing gaze over the suits around them – besides, wilfully or not, he’s already decided he’d rather get married in his night robes than any one of these tacky suits.

“You’re getting married in a few days and you’d like him to not risk so much so close to the date, that’s reasonable,” Darcy certifies with a small yet somewhat sad smile. “I worry about him as his friend, I can’t imagine what you’re feeling Magnus.”

The space between them goes quiet after that. Before they’re able to escape, a shop attendant has made her way over to them, eager to quiz them on ‘their’ wedding till Darcy hastily corrects her. Magnus even prepares himself for the judgemental look the moment Darcy goes on to mention Alec, but to his surprise, the woman barely blinks before turning to ask Magnus what suit he’s looking for.

Twenty minutes later, stood in a burgundy suit making him look more akin to his sofa cushions, Magnus is starting to doubt whether choosing Darcy to go suit shopping was a safe bet at all.

“It’s… nice?” Her words are mostly drowned out by her laughter, though she tries to stifle it behind her hand, shoulders still shaking somewhat making the bracelets rattle around her wrists.

“It’s an abomination,” Magnus sighs, forfeiting a glance up and down in the mirror and wincing slightly, reflex triggering him to pull the blazer from his shoulders before the hell fabric can damage his self-image any more.

“Just out of curiosity,” Darcy says from behind him, as Magnus begins to return each item of clothing to its appropriate hanger, “I don’t know if it’s even a real thing, but would you say it was love at first sight between you and Alec?”

“You’ve seen Alec so it was something at first sight,” Magnus replies deftly, disappearing around the changing room curtain but still hearing the bark of laughter this elicits from Darcy. When he emerges again a minute later, in thankfully his own blissful clothing, the girl’s looking back at him with shining eyes as though he’s yet to answer the question.

“I felt… drawn to him,” Magnus resolves to tell her, because it’s pretty true to exactly how he felt the first time he saw those hazel eyes under magenta club lighting, “let’s say part of who Alec is… his family… don’t usually accept relationships like ours. Over and above us both being men.”

“They didn’t want you dating their son because you aren’t part of their cult?” Darcy queries - not sarcastically.

“You could say that…” the warlock returns with a grin, but as the girl’s choice of words sink in, Magnus thinks about the clave on their high-fucking-horses, so obsessed with themselves, only able to look _down_ when it come to anyone else, and he find’s himself grinning wider: “In fact, I quite like the analogy.”

Darcy grins back.

“But Alec’s different in general. As soon as I met him I realised I could trust him with my life… which was a new feeling for me.”

Magnus doesn’t really know why he’s telling this to a girl he’s only known for a total of five months, but something about Darcy’s curious eyes makes Magnus think she’s eager to listen and, with the exception of the man he’s marrying in three days’ time, the warlock doesn’t know many people willing to listen – it’s become a rarer trait over the decades.

“And you could trust him with your heart?” Darcy says then, her innocence showing in the authenticity of the question which is the first unsure one she’s asked Magnus.

“I wanted to… He’s proved that I can. Alexander has surprised me in countless ways, not breaking my heart only one of them.”

She nods, a small smile edging its way across her features and a beat of silence lingers between them. Then she stands abruptly: “Well, that’s the last suit of the one’s you chose,” Darcy declares, crossing her arms across her chest as she does so. “You know, for a guy who doesn't have a suit to wear to his wedding in less than a week, you're exceedingly calm about it.”

“On the contrary my dear, uncharacteristic calm is the last stage of utter hopelessness.”

Thanking the shop attendant, who they’d come to know as Jill, they exit the shop – Magnus with a categorical sigh of relief – and return to the fresh air, arm in arm. Which is how Magnus notice that Darcy’s chuckling again, shoulders shaking where she leans against him: “You do know Alec doesn't care what you wear?”

“Alec would marry me in our lounge in our underwear. Which, while endearing, doesn't help me pick a suit for our public wedding,” Magnus tells her, believing the words entirely as he says them. He may not have wanted to pay it much attention at the time, but he remembers Alec’s arranged wedding. He’s pretty sure the entire arrangement was Izzy’s doing – wedding planning just isn’t Alexander’s forte.

“Okay, point taken. But did none of those suits take your fancy? Not one?” She says, the cool air causing her already rosy cheeks to blush even darker. Magnus hadn’t noticed it was even that cold till now, observing the mist trailing from the girl’s lips.

“Do you know what will happen to my reputation if I walk down the aisle in a conventional black wedding suit?” Magnus exclaims, mock offended.

“What? The reputation only you care about?” Darcy retorts as though she was prepared for his exact words. Which doesn’t surprise him. Nor does the grin she beams his way. The reply itself however, feels remarkably familiar. 

With a sigh, the warlock rolls his eyes despite the fact that he can’t stop the returning smile already hijacking his features: “I forget that you and Alec regularly converse."

***

“Earlier, was there any particular reason why you wanted to know if it was love at for site for Alec and me?”

“I told you, curiosity.”

“And the truth?”

“... Alec told you I quit my job?”

“I remember him being pleased about it.”

“But you know the guys I met there were all asses anyway.”

“Unpleasant would be an understatement.”

“So I just assumed that’s why I never liked any of them.”

“Assumed?”

“The night I quit my job… I ended up at this bar… where I met this girl… and we talked, a lot, and then it was like… _oh_.”

“Oh?”

“Well she ended up walking me home and writing her number on my hand, but I don’t know what I’m doing, Magnus, I never had a proper boyfriend never mind a…”

“Let us not get ahead of ourselves, have you called her?”

“No…?”

“Well then my dear, you must call her.”

***

They’re amidst avid conversation as they barrel through the loft doors, and Magnus feels indescribably young again partaking in such fickle discussion. It’s as if in these minutes, talking with young, innocent Darcy – so oblivious to the real, dark world that constantly threatens her future – he’s no longer a warlock of hundreds of years, but instead as youthful and carefree as she is.

It’s a lie, and lies make things temporary and breakable, Magnus knows this. Lies are the things kept in glass jars with candy stripped lids, delicious at first taste but deadly in quantity. It’s a lie because Darcy can never know who he is, without losing her innocence. So these minutes will always be confined to mere minutes, that he’ll have to appreciate while he can.

But then Darcy’s voice fades out completely, and before Magnus can question why he sees Alexander, sat there, breathing, alive and looking back at Magnus like he never thought he’d get to again. All at once it feels like he’s been holding his breath ever since Alec walked out this morning, and _finally_ he can breathe again. The tidal wave of relief is almost enough to knock him off his feet, and it succeeds in leaving him thoroughly winded as he watches similar relief mirrored in Alec’s eyes, staring back at him across the lofts centre room.

He’s faintly aware of Darcy at his side, hand squeezing his arm and Magnus is almost certain the small pads of her fingertips are the only thing left tethering him to reality. Her breath is tepid, lips ghosting over his cheek, a peck to say thanks, leaving words at his ear: “I’ll leave you guys to it.” And with that, the loft door clicks shut.

“You were out with Darcy?” Alec’s words are far steadier than he looks on his feet but he stands as the warlock crosses the vast space till they’re stood with a meagre meter between them, bathed under mid-afternoon light cast in through the loft's scooping windows.

Alec’s pale complexion darkens in faint rings round his eyes, that likewise reflect muted exhaustion, but each breath heaves his chest in and out with steady motion, and his gaze is fixed on Magnus without reluctance. His Alexander is okay – tired, breathing and okay. And Magnus never thought relief would feel so heavy and light at the same time.

“We went suit shopping,” Magnus says, knowing that this anything but idle chit-chat, just two head-over-heals lovers trying desperately to walk around the elephant in the room: their painful love for each other. Darcy had been spot on, Magnus hadn’t been reasonable this morning, because nothing about love is ever reasonable – he’s had centuries to learn that. 

“Any luck?” Alec asks, one hand cupping the back of his neck while the other hangs frivolously by his side, clenching intermittently, the shadowhunter’s eyes never once leaving Magnus.

And the warlock can already feel it happening: the determination of gravity and the wish of celestial beings refusing to let them part, provoking them into each step they take, so that inch by inch the space inbetween them lessens.

“None at all,” Magnus answers.

A smile and a breath later and they’ve melted into each other’s arms and Magnus can feel his relief settling like permanent warmth in his muscles. Alec’s arms hug tight around the warlock’s waist, and he can feel the tingle of the shadowhunter's breath against his neck where Alec buries his face.

“What is it Alexander? Not going to tell me that you don’t care what I wear?” Magnus teases, too content back in his fiancé’s arms to desire ever letting go, so that even when Alec moves back a fraction to have their gazes meet, the warlock pointedly fastens his arms around Alec’s neck.

So what if he’s being slightly possessive?

“You already know I don’t care what you wear. But if it matters to you, maybe…” Alec’s words fade out with curious abruptness and Magnus is at once intrigued, cocking his head with avid confusion.

“Maybe what?”

“We could... go shopping…” Alec surrenders, each word more unsure than the last.

“Is Alexander saying he’d be willing to go clothes shopping with me?” Magnus can feel the grin slowly taking over his features, contagious joy leaking to his eyes.  
“I’ll need something to do if I’m not at the institute for the next three days.”

Alec says the words so casually, Magnus almost doesn’t sire, till they register in his head and all at once, his smile’s gone, replaced with a admittedly slightly stunned look. A look that earns him a small smile from Alec – an almost proud one that glints with a self-satisfaction more commonly seen on his sister. But it’s gone as fast as it arrived. Then he's pulling back from the warlock’s arms with an suddenly apologetic expression, carful to stay within Magnus’ reach though his hand travels to the bottom seam of his shirt:

“I got caught, claw not teeth but it was pretty deep.” With the words, he lifts the shirt to reveal his bound side, bandage dyed red with dried blood.

“Oh Alexander…”

“I carried on fighting and then everything started spinning and I knew if I continued…” Alec’s eyes drop, but even though Magnus is desperate to reach out, he waits for Alec to continue. “So I left. Izzy took out the spawning demon, Curtis and Leighton and the other recruits cleared the area and I let Jace stich me up.”

When Alec seems to pause to gather his breath and brave a glance back up to the warlock, Magnus lets himself speak a line of his thoughts: “That definitely relieves me.”

The shadowhunter lets him intertwine their fingers with that. Alec’s skilled hands that have been firing deadly aimed arrows since he was a boy. Alec’s hands which he counts on in battle and depends on to protect those he loves. Alec’s hands which he’s punished in the wake of tragedies and sorrow. Alec hands which treat Magnus as though he were glass – not delicate, but precious.

“But Magnus, back at the institute I realised that I would have followed Izzy into the building if you hadn’t reminded me that she’s a good hunter on her own. I only stayed behind because I remembered what you said.” The shadowhunter exhales, seemingly breathless as he mumbles his next words: “I guess when we’re fighting together she’s always…”

“Your little sister,” Magnus completes, lifting a hand to Alec’s neck, thump brushing across his deflect rune. “Alexander, I shouldn’t have asked you not to go, it’s your job…”

“No, you were right,” Alec interrupts, “I left this morning thinking you had nothing to worry about and still came close to not coming home.”

“It’s your job. I knew that when I met you and I knew that when I fell in love with you, it was unfair of me to ask of you to suddenly set it aside.”

Alec’s gaze falters, but with a deep intake of breath, he looks up again, emotions brimming in his hazel eyes: “I am what I am, which means I can’t promise that I’ll always come home… but I will always fight to come home, Magnus, I can promise that.”

How indescribably fond is he of this brave and brooding, reckless and sweet, mess of a lover and shadowhunter. How in awe is he of this soldier, who’s never doubted the warlock’s strength, never treated him as any less, but desired to protect him out of love alone. How lost is he in his love, who lights stars along the warlock’s skin with every touch, leaving galaxies between his shoulder blades, and Milky Ways within his palms.

And how oblivious Alec is to it all.

“I mean it Magnus. Maybe it was different two years ago when as long as Izzy and Jace got out of the mission alive, I didn't care about what happened to me but things are different now. I want to come home, I'm always going to fight to come home.”

“I appreciate that,” Magnus hums, pulling Alec forward till their foreheads meet and closing his eyes as to saver the sensation: “You have no idea how much I love you Alexander.”

Minutes will always be confined to mere minutes, and one must learn to appreciate them while able. But some minutes, the rarest kind, can have a feeling of being infinite, just like this one, right here: Alec alive, heart beating under the warlock’s fingertips, in identical rhythm to his own. And then it’s impossible to consider illogicality, or how anyone could find this close to absurd, when the most absurd thing he’s even considered is that anything else has ever felt more right than this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It would be cool to know your thoughts of the lovely Darcy, I think original characters make fics interesting but I'm intrigued to know whether you like her or not. And thoughts about Darcy bringing her sweetheart as her plus one to the wedding? 
> 
> ps. that was my allotted angst for this entire fic :)


	5. In Two Days Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alec's fear of wedding planning....

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took me a little longer to update, I was out of the country, but now that I’m back. Besides that, I don't know how I feel about this chapter so I've been a little reluctant publishing it but I can't rewrite it anymore so do tell me what you think.  
> I’m a bit lazy with editing at the moment so apologies in advance for mistakes and typos. Thanks a lot for reading.

There comes a time in any immortal’s life where said immortal realises how lonesome immortality can almost unavoidably become, to a point that some would argue immortality is even a curse. Magnus can’t disagree with them there; postponing death does only allow for one to witness more.

Not to be too much of a downer, though facts are often cruel. 

Which is, for the most part, the reason why Magnus has always basked in company, sought out attention and thrived in communal space; living in the moment and living it with a self-assured confidence that says he knows the choreography – never eager to admit he’s guessing his way at ever turn, just like any mortal.

At least, a desire to never be lonely had definitely been the main objective behind buying Pandemonium. Because company is the only sure-fire way not to be condemned by your thoughts. One can always be alone in them but if the music’s loud enough, the liquor dazing enough, and people close enough, it’s hard to hear them at all. 

Magnus has no intention of paying attention to immortality’s lonesomeness any time soon, and in the meantime, he’ll busy himself with in-the-moment, fast moving, loud and blissful company.  

Saying that, he’s never _needed_ the company to be in large quantity. A room full of friends isn’t a bad alternative. 

In fact, the loft has been delightfully busy in these five months leading up to the wedding – he’s almost sad to think that today could be the last time Clary and Izzy sit at his dining room table quizzing him about his wants and wishes when it comes to the big day. 

Not that they’re any longer mere _‘wants’_ and _‘wishes’_ since today’s the finalizer: Sunday’s rehearsal, if you will. Today it’s the _‘wants come true’_ and the _‘wishes met’_. 

Hogging the spot at the head of the table, an undertaking she’s maintained for the entire five months – is Isabelle, locks of dark hair spilling over her shoulder from a high placed ponytail, starkly contrasting the red of Clary’s where she leans over Isabelle to follow her finger along a page in the planner spread out across the table. 

A seat down from them, Alexander sits entertaining minimal interest in the planner whatsoever – something he too has been doing for much of these five mouths – with Darcy at his side, who alternatively peers around him, at best attempting to pay attention to Isabelle. 

It had been Clary who’d mentioned a couple of weeks prior the somewhat mundane tradition of having an entire practice run-through of the wedding before the date. The absurdity of the thought had perturbed Alec, who’d then proceeded to state multiple times how unnecessary he thought it. 

That had been the night Alec asked Magnus if they could portal to the other side of the world and get married at that minute, which had left Magnus with the task of persuading his fiancé that Isabelle’s disposition discovering their spontaneous matrimony wouldn’t be a pleasant one, no matter how appealing he found the notion. Perhaps the visual of his sister fuming had convinced Alec, though his condition remained that there be no rehearsal wedding. 

So naturally Isabelle’s spent most of this morning rehearsing it verbally as thoroughly as she can. 

Grinning at his fiancé’s disinterest, that boarder’s slightly on impatience, Magnus passes Alec a wink as he places a tray of snacks down on the table, Isabelle seamlessly progressing onto the next topic in her wedding planner: the reception. A topic change that all of a sudden causes Darcy to straighten in her seat. 

“Talking about the reception,” pipes up the blonde, interrupting Isabelle for possibly the first time in forty solid minutes, and Magnus immediately wants to keel over with laughter as Alec’s face brightens indescribably, “apparently I’m tending the bar with a friend of yours?”

Moving over to his own bar to begin the methodical process of drink devising – a different concoction for each individual who’s tastes he’s gradually learnt over the last five months – Magnus winces apologetically: So that’s what he forgot to talk to Darcy about yesterday.

“Yes, Maia, forgive me for not checking with you but I wanted to insure you both got a chance to enjoy the party too,” Magnus replies all at once, watching the girl’s eyes soften with the beginnings of a smile teasing at her lips as she shakes her head loosely. 

“It’s totally fine,” Darcy starts, yet still as soon as her eyes drop a level to start meticulously studying his table top, Magnus knows there’s a ‘but’ coming. The warlock may have exquisite taste in furniture, but he’s also got impeccable skill in reading people that he’s had centuries to hone. “…I’m just going to need to have the earlier shift.”

“You can’t stay?” Alec asks, and it’s so very Alec for the statement to be unhindered by emotion, empty of anger or hurt that could in anyway phase Darcy, that the girl even manages to glance up then and catch the shadowhunter’s eye; hers lit with a blend of worry and regret.

Darcy Williams – with her colourful tattoos, sun kissed skin painted copiously with freckles, and hair as golden-blonde as the beams of sunlight always cast over the loft floor in the last hours of dusk – fits her grins and wears confidence well, and too often does Magnus recognise the anxiety permanently reflected in her sapphire eyes. 

“My dad’s… being a little overbearing at the moment,” she speaks out into the quiet room with an air of calm, because like her perpetual feature of anxiety, her acquaintance with it has been something the warlock’s always recognised. 

Enough to conclude, at the very least, that ‘overbearing’ is a common fixture of her dad and something Darcy’s very obviously become used to. “He’s digging into me if I get home too late after shifts, forgetting that I’m almost twenty-two. I was trying to work the longer hours to save up for my own place but…”

“Why don’t you come stay at the loft?” Alec interrupts her before she can even come to the end of her explanation, and the words – successfully widening Darcy’s eyes by a considerable margin – are just as surprising to Magnus as he almost drops the glass he’s holding. 

“I… can’t do that,” Darcy stutters at once and there it is again, that undying anxiety flickering away like a candle that just won’t go out. 

“It’s not like Magnus and Alec are even going to be here after Sunday,” Isabelle suggests in the beat of silence that follows, tone just as neutral as her brother’s but implication ever present. 

Pouring the last of the fluorescent, fruity cocktail (he’s perfected to Darcy’s unique taste) into her glass, Magnus grins as Alec’s suggestion runs through his head once more, this time less unexpected so therefore pulling from him a more realistic reaction. Isabelle’s right, it’s not like they’re even going to be here after Sunday.

In fact, he’d been planning on dropping off Chairman Meow at Ragnor’s last minute (so his dear friend couldn’t turn him away) but Darcy adores the cat – a little too much for Magnus’ liking since she severely worsens the cat’s incessant need for attention in the wake of her departure. With Darcy at the loft, she’d watch after the feline and he’d be relieved of having to hear Ragnor’s protest. 

“Why not? There’s plenty of room,” Magnus tells her, placing the glass on the table top Darcy drums metallic blue fingernails against.

“Magnus has had Jace as a roommate,” Clary adds, as though the statement on its own makes the debate now irrelevant, though she confirms anyway a second later:

“You’re more than charming in comparison.” 

Darcy grins at that, and quite honestly, so does Magnus. Clary and Jace are very obviously in love, and it’s something that’s never been under consideration. Their eyes shine with it. The delicate bird who fell for a golden eagle; if one holds their own through the cringy metaphor, Magnus thinks its true. Still Clary teases him ruthless, perpetual fondness the only tell-tale sign of deeper feelings. 

“I don’t want you to feel you have to offer, I can handle my dad,” Darcy says while her fingers – cobalt nails glinting – trace the rim of her cocktail glass in a mindless motion that Magnus follows with his gaze.  

“Stay here till you’ve saved enough and then you can move into your own place,” Alec tells the girl, like the idea makes too much sense for her to find reason arguing against it.

Still Darcy persists: “I don’t want to infringe…” Instigating a sigh from the hazel-eyed shadowhunter beside her and making Magnus chuckle under his breath as he returns to the table with Alec’s choice of alcohol: the worlds weakest cocktail, even if the warlock agrees that the drink’s a little refreshing to make up for its lacklustre.

“Daringly, you heard Isabelle, after Sunday we’re not even going to be at the loft. It would be helpful if you wouldn’t mind looking after Chairman Meow.” Magnus throws a glance over his shoulder to the sunbathed portion of floor he’d spotted the Chairman occupying earlier. There he lies still, sprawled out in order for as ample amount of his grey-black tabby fur to catch the much-desired sun as possible. 

“You know I love your cat, but are you sure?” 

“Positive.”

“Well, the venue’s a hotel so you can stay in one of the suites after the reception anyway, they’re free for guests of the wedding,” Isabelle proposes, tapping the page of the planner in front of her as though she’d have got to telling them that if they hadn’t all interrupted her so rudely. 

“Oh and Magnus, how’s your suit coming along?” 

It isn’t fair, the question catches him unawares, and before he can catch his breath, Magnus is coughing on liquor, the fruity aftertaste no less painful lining his lungs. Not that he places the cocktail glass down. No, he needs that to strategically hide behind, to keep his eyes drawn somewhere that isn’t the growing intensity of Isabelle’s stare.

“Wait, you still don’t have a suit to wear?” Clary exclaims, the raw shock to her tone just enough to exhibit her decided horror at the thought that Magnus may still not _really_ have decided _exactly_ what it is he _might_ wear to his wedding in just less than two days’ time.  

“It’s a work in progress,” the warlock defends lamely, purposefully avoiding the eyes of both girls sat glaring at him from the head of the table. 

“Don’t worry, he’s not calm, he’s just in the last stage of utter hopelessness,” Darcy chips, and Alec scoffs in a way that Magnus recognises to be him concealing laughter that would surely put him at the end of his sisters’ firearms.

“Magnus…” Isabelle groans instead, and now the warlock’s grinning to, looking across the table at beautiful Alexander, smile hidden behind a hand and eyes simply shining with amusement. It’s enough to snag his full attention and keep it there, whole seconds ticking by.

“I’m working on it,” he says, forcing his focus away from Alec. It’s a little unfair that Alec is still able to do that: catch Magnus so off guard with just how beautiful he is in the most casual of moments. It’s a little more unfair that Alec is still able to do that considering that they’ll be married by the end of the week. You’d have thought he’d have become accustomed to it by now. Apparently not.

Just then, an electronic ring rises from the phones of the three shadowhunters and it’s a sound Magnus recognises only because of the drop in his chest. That’s the sound that means Alec has to go; that’s the sound that has cut their time short on many an occasion, mobile screen filling with the angelic rune that pulls him back to duty time and time again. 

Clary’s on her feet instantly, Isabelle closing the planner with a deep-winded sigh, both girls placing their respective glass down onto the table top. Once Isabelle too is on her feet and righting her jacket with poise to go, Magnus recognises how motionless Alec’s remained. Something that his sister, and Clary for that matter, take no notice of.

“Duty calls, but I’m not done with you yet, Magnus,” Isabelle says, causing the warlock to tear his eyes away from his stationary fiancé, though the words alone aren’t quite enough to clear the confusion from his features. 

“Thanks for the drinks Magnus,” Clary says, passing behind his chair with a touch, and slight squeeze, to his shoulder as she goes. 

“Be careful,” Alec calls to them as the girls make there way out into the hallway of the loft, and his words earn him a scoff from Isabelle.

“Always am,” her voice rings back.

It’s only once he hears the loft door _click_ , that Magnus is casting his eyes back to Alec, eyebrows still furrowed in an expression of puzzlement, that he shares with Darcy, and that the shadowhunter seems to be finding amusing. 

“I told you Magnus, no more missions,” Alec mumbles through his small smile.

The warlock’s never known words to bring with them such ecstasy. 

***

Alec’s _significantly_ more content in the wake of Isabelle leaving. 

That’s not to say that the shadowhunter’s temperament over the past five months hasn’t been so varied – to a rather hilarious extent – it’s become Magnus’ favourite part of the planning sessions; his moods so vastly different from each other that the warlock’s lost count of the times he’s been left a little dazed.

Interestingly enough, wedding planning has fallen into two categories for Alec: ‘Stuff to do with Magnus’, and ‘stuff to do with how, when and where he’ll marry the warlock’, and how he’s reacted to both has proven to be categorically different. 

Discussing his vows with Isabelle, in a conversation neither knew Magnus had been half listening in on, Alec had maintained avid concentration. Talk of their honeymoon had put Alec is such high spirits that keeping a straight face around Isabelle’s obviously unsettled disposition had been quite challenging for the warlock. 

But the moment it had become about the venue, cake, or seating arrangement, Alec’s interest always sunk to pretty none existent, not half because none of the above factored as necessities for the day they tell generations of prejudice clave members to ‘suck it’, and prove that they intend to be happy regardless of anyone’s opinion.

All things considered, Alec’s mood improves dramatically the moment the threat of Isabelle with her planner is gone, and with it comes lulled and carefree conversation between the three of them, and refilled glasses till their eyes reflect a little more of the early afternoon sun, a heat buzzing in their chests and a hum beneath their skin. 

Darcy fits well in the loft atmosphere – Magnus thinks: With Chairman Meow curled on her lap and purring with all his might. As she and the warlock talk – most of Alec’s contribution being the light trace of his fingertips against Magnus’ forearm – she fills them in about the mundane world: a fairy-tale in contrast to its shadowed relative. 

And when another glass is empty, Darcy is finally shaking her head to one more. 

“I better get going.” The sentence itself is lazy and she doesn’t make a substantial attempt to move from her current spot on the chair opposite the sofa he and Alec fill, nothing more at least than a shift forward to fully lay the sole of her feet against his burgundy carpet. 

“You have somewhere to be?” The warlock queries, hand lifting to rid her of her glass before a bolt of panic rips through him with the flashing-red, urgent reminder that his hands are only hands around a girl oblivious of the downworld. 

The warlock wonders if Alec caught the motion since that shadowhunter’s eyes seem drawn suddenly to his hand as he goes instead to drum his fingers against the armrest. Not that Darcy seems aware even in the slightest that she almost just witnessed the warlock’s magic.  

No, Darcy continues on obliviously, running her hands a little more roughly through the Chairman’s fur, in half attempt to stir him somewhat before she’s regretfully lifting the cat from his resting place against her, to place him back on the chair behind her as she stands – much to the resentment of the feline. 

When she’s stood in his living room debating her next move, she turns to Magnus with a decision painted clearly across her face and says: “I took your advice.”

He’s almost about to ask her what she means by the words, knowing Alec’s easily thinking the same, when their conversation from the day before springs to mind merely for the fact that her eyes shine with the same forced courage they did when they’d talked then. 

Darcy Williams, trying so hard to be completely confident with herself, when Magnus knows full well that you can have years, riches, and even magic, and never be wholly self-confident because shadowed or not, the world doesn’t hold place for it: a wholly self-confident being. 

“You called her?” Magnus replies as he stands, fully aware that this does nothing to help Alec sat shifting his gaze between both of them with a growing look of puzzlement written between furrowed eyebrows and narrowed eyes. Puzzled is a cute look on his Alexander, Magnus decides in the moment; a positively endearing look on his fearless hunter.

“Mickey, she’s– she’s taking me out to dinner,” Darcy tells them, her breath someway to uneven though the words themselves as she speaks them grow in confidence. 

“Mickey?” Alec says with just the slightest edge of agitation to it purely because he still appears to be at a total loss for what the context could possibly be, standing to better study the girls features which ever so slowly pan out into a small but genuine smile. 

“She prefers it over Mikala… she’s a girl… who might have made me realise that I’m at least not 100% heterosexual.”

The words only hang in the air meagre seconds before it’s Alec’s turn to smile, and though Magnus can tell he doesn’t mean for it to completely take over his features, it does, spreading across his face sufficiently wide enough for the shadowhunter to duck his head marginally. 

Turning back to Magnus like she needs to provide an explanation, she begins hastily “we ended up talking on the phone for… a while,” and in her hesitation alone, Magnus can tell for a first timer, the girls fallen hard so exceedingly fast, “she wanted to see me again.”

While he almost wants to warn her against it, caution her about protecting her heart like he’s so recklessly forgotten to in the past, the warlock can’t bring himself to tarnishing the gleam in the young girl’s bright eyes. Perhaps this Mickey girl is as truly well-meaning as Darcy’s version of her; perhaps this Mickey, whoever she is, is justly deserving of Darcy’s admiration. 

These are primarily the thoughts running their course through his head when Darcy cocks her head at his scrutiny and says: “Why are you looking at me like that?”

Before Magnus can answer the girl’s question, not that he really knows how to without bruising the pure puppy love still ever shining in Darcy’s eyes, Alec’s interrupting: “Don’t think too much.”

Darcy hesitates, flicking her gaze in the shadowhunter’s direction: “Was that… dating advice?” She asks, fully displaying her surprise that sharpens as Alec nods nonchalantly. 

“My fiancé right.” If Magnus is honesty, then yes, he uses the term needlessly purely because he likes the sound of it; and whether or not it’s a privilege he’s been able to abuse from months now, it hasn’t become the slightest bit tiring. “Don’t think too much, trust your instincts and hold her hand.”

Screw his own concerns, Darcy has the right to be happy just like he does. If Mickey makes her so, then good for them! So be it that hearts break. Hearts heal too. 

“That’s Magnus Bane’s three step guide to dating?” The sarcasm that threads the statement is palpable and grating, enough to bubble laughter in his chest. 

Stepping past her, the warlock deftly sweeps Chairman Meow off the seat he was planted upon, into his arms instead till the cat’s cradled against his chest and pawing gratefully at Magnus for it. The Chairman must easily be the greediest cat Magnus has ever known when it comes to wanting attention. Attention he gives him anyway because Magnus is weak that way.

Turning back to Darcy, the warlock shrugs. “It got me Alexander.”

Now, Alec is most definitely not the sharing type, so Magnus is a touch taken aback when the shadowhunter blurts out: “That’s not much of an achievement…” Then he’s pretty convinced Alec-lightweight-Lightwood has had too many sips of the warlock’s cocktail when Alec adds: “I was sold when I saw you.”

Darcy huffs a laugh, stepping a single pace towards Magnus to be in proximity to run her fingers through the thick fur behind Chairman’s ears, sighing in a longwinded manner as she does so. “Alec Lightwood’s guide to dating is to look attractive then?” Her deadpan isn’t enough to distract from the slightly nervous edge to her tone that slips out with the cynicism. 

“Or be late,” Magnus suggests with an incline of his head, eyes amused and keenly watching a smile crack across the girls face though she battles against it. 

“Right. I should go.” Scratching Chairman Meow a final time, she gives the warlock a small nod as she steps back. She leans up to peck Alec’s check as she passes him, a habit of the mundane girl’s, and then she turns her back, footsteps dull against the carpeted floor. 

“Good luck,” Magnus calls after her, before hearing the loft door click. 

***

Alec isn’t drunk. That isn’t an exaggeration, the shadowhunter stands steady, words un-slurred, eyes sure: Alec isn’t drunk. But having the warmth of alcohol in his veins, Alec’s hands aren’t pulled behind his back either, and as rare as it is, Magnus can tell that for this moment, and for however long it sustains, his Alexander is feeling particularly carefree. 

Carefree is another look that Magnus appreciates seeing on Alec once in a while. Carefree is a look he’d prefer to see on Alec more often. But he’ll take it for today and hope to see it tomorrow. For now, it’s his job to push his fiancé back against the sofa. It’s Alec job to let him, which he does. 

They haven’t had the loft to themselves since ten o’clock this morning and the warlock relishes in the freedom to follow Alec down, moving to straddle the shadowhunter who’s hands quickly come to rest against his waist. 

“You know, I can’t help but recall you saying something about taking me shopping yesterday,” Magnus practically purrs, placing his arms around Alec’s neck to pull their bodies a fraction closer.

“Darcy said you went to every wedding shop in New York, is there anywhere left to take you?” Alec responds with a teasing grin, looking up through dark eyelashes in an idleness that speaks of how easy this has become between them, the air uncharged because Magnus has no desire to charge it. Not in this moment. He rather desires taking Alexander shopping right about now. 

“She exaggerates,” Magnus protests to which Alec merely grins with a fond shake of his head, “but I was thinking something further afield than simply New York.” As are the perks of being a warlock.  

“How much further?” 

“Somewhere with an entirely different culture, I’m in need of inspiration.” 

“Magnus, how much further?”

The warlock allows himself to debate it for a handful of seconds before reaching for a pocket in the low cutting waistcoat he just so happens to be wearing, from which, he pulls an object particularity familiar to both of them: an omamori charm.

“Do you remember when you got me this?” 

He must admit, he’s acquainted to just about every aspect of this little charm, from its weight to its colour down to every detail in its beautiful and intricate embroidery. He’s accustomed to the flood of fondness that will never fail to wash over him every time he recalls the memory. He’s even conversant with the resounding assuredness that the charm brings him. 

Which makes Alec’s choice of words foreign to his ears: “I can’t believe you still have that?”

“I’m offended that you think I’d ever be without it,” Magnus exclaims, spreading mock offence thick across his features till Alec’s laughing with a surrendering gesture. 

“So you want to go to Tokyo?” The shadowhunter suggests, dropping his surrender so that his hands come to rest on the warlock’s thighs as affection leaks from his hazel eyes into the rest of his expression. Again, though their bodies remain pressed close, the air feels vacant of the electricity that would have been sparking there once. Though this is so far past the sparks of lust. 

“I do so love the Palace Hotel,” Magnus mumbles, pondering over memories of their earlier dates: sunsets over city horizon lines that always matched in shade the blush of Alec’s cheeks.

“I thought we were going shopping,” Alec questions, once more narrowing his eyes in the manner the warlock can’t help finding quite adorable, causing him to bring their forehead together.

“We can stop by for some dinner,” he justifies. Magnus isn’t quite sure what’s exactly so funny about the suggestion but then Alexander is laughing; a breathy laugh that he half stifles when he leans in to press his lip in a chaste kiss to the warlock’s check. They’re so close. So close that their breath mingles, and Alec only lingers a second longer before kissing the tip of Magnus’ nose lightly.

“What was that for?” Magnus says through his own fond smile, wondering whether he does in fact want to leave the loft at all. Frankly, he’s suddenly pretty content with their current situation. 

“Nothing… I just love you.” Alec responds in the candid way he always does. 

“Good, because I am exceedingly fond of you Alexander.”

Magnus has always abused company in attempt to avoid the inevitable lonesomeness that immortality brings with its curse. However, he’s never needed the company to be in large quantity. A room full of friends isn’t a bad alternative. Being alone with Alexander is the best alternative.

People believe love is supposed to be fireworks. 

Magnus isn’t disputing that, he’s had his fair share of them, but all firework shows come to an end.

Finding Alexander – falling into love anew, plummeting carelessly with ever instinct telling him the landing would be his end, and finding Alec at the bottom of the fall with bright hazel eyes gleaming back at him – had been a firework show of note. 

It had filled his chest with heat, igniting sparks at his fingertips, and while the warlock has indeed lived centuries, he’s never had his magic feel as uncontainable and overwhelming as when Alec Lightwood first said ‘I love you’. 

Then, of course, kissing the shadowhunter had become ordinary. And ordinary for immortal beings is dangerous… and ordinary for Magnus is spectacular. 

Feeling Alec’s arms wrapped around him, hearing Alec snoring beside him, and seeing Alec grinning sleepily at him, no longer feels like fireworks. Good morning pecks, see-you-soon caresses, thought-of-you evening take outs, and relaxing soaks together in warm scented water, no longer sets his heart racing. 

Because now it slows it down, till Magnus feels indescribably calm, like with Alexander, time can stand for a suspended minute, and he can feel nothing but deep contentment and familiarity. 

Because lust’s fireworks are daunting, new love is terrifying, trusting another being with your heart – and waiting for them to break it – is one of the most frightening things the warlock knows. 

But ordinary, loving Alec and feeling his love in return every day, is better than fireworks. This constant, that doesn’t have his heart skipping beats, that leaves his stomach vacant of butterflies and checks unflushed, this constant is feeling entirely comfortable in the single company of a hazel-eyed shadowhunter, butterflies replaced with trust and hearts beating in sync. 

_This is better than fireworks_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is it just me or have Malec kinda adopted Darcy by now… I swear it was entirely unintentional, it just sorta happened.


	6. Author’s Note

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just an authors note :)

I could make the excuse of being overwhelmed returning to school and revising for exams but quite honestly it comes down to being rather uninspired. I’m sorry to any one following this story but right now I don’t think I’m up to completing it. That’s not to say I don’t definitely want to in the future but I know my writing is suffering right now due to being so uninspired, and I’d rather wait till I’m back to enjoying it, than publish something I’m not really happy with. 

So, I’m taking a break from this fic. But I’ll be back. It’s a work in progress and hopefully I’ll be back to feeling up to writing again soon. 

Thank you so much for anyone who’s reading. I’m just as anxious to complete this fic so here’s hoping this Writer’s block leaves soon. Thanks again to anyone who’s commented and liked this series. :)


End file.
